Abstract

Hollow fiber membrane oxygenators (HFMO), which have been used since the 1950s to provide patients with temporary (up to six hour) oxygen support during a cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB), are today being increasingly used for other therapies, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPB), that can last for up to 20-30 days at a time.

This extended contact time between hollow fiber membranes and blood increases the complications of the natural blood biochemical process of “coagulation”, which diminishes oxygen transfer and increases the pressure drop, ultimately causing the oxygenators to fail. The study described in this article was designed to obtain greater insight into the gas transfer mechanism at microscopic scale using computational fluid dynamics in order to accelerate design exploration to find the optimal solution.