• TET
• telemetry
• control unit
• sensorized platform

In the industrialized countries, heart failure is the most frequent cause of death. The ageing of the world population and the low availability of heart donors with respect to the demand have led to the develop and experimentation of device therapy for patients with heart failure, not only as bridge to transplant, but also as destination therapy.
Nowadays different mechanical ventricular assist devices (VADs) are in use but, in order to use them as alternative to transplant, an approach could be the development of a implantable platform integrating, on the VAD, miniaturized innovative flow and pressure sensors and implementing a continuous monitoring strategy, with the purpose to optimize and personalize the heart unloading degree.
The main components of the implantable platform are: the LVAD, the monitoring flow and pressure sensors embedded on the pump, a transcutaneous energy transfer (TET) system, a telemetry (TEL) system and a central control unit (ARU) for the wireless transfer of data collected by the implanted sensors and the control of the VAD status.
This work of thesis is about the integration of the pressure sensors on a in-vitro platform, emulating the implantable platform, the contribution on the ARU development and pc-based graphical user interface and the evaluation of the biocompatibility and efficiency of the TET and TEL systems.