Endoscopic arterial pumps for treatment of cardiac insufficiency and venous pumps for right-sided cardiac support

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Various blood pumps have been developed for insertion in arteries and are well known in the art.
Suitable devices for use in the invention herein are disclosed in Rise, U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,643,207; Elsberry et al.
, U.
S.
Pat.
Nos.
5,711,316, 5,735,814, 5,814,014, and 5,832,932; Rom, U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,746,709; Patton et al.
, U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,759,017; Robinson, U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,840,069; Torgerson et al.
, U.
S.
Pat.
No.
5,820,589; Allen et al.
, Artificial Organs 21(8):922-928 (1997); and Sieb et al.
, Artificial Organs 19(7):644-652 (1995), all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The present invention provides methods for endoscopic placement of blood pump(s) in a patient's blood vessel(s) for treatment of heart failure and/or severe venous insufficiency.
More specifically, the invention utilizes a catheter having an expandable stent releasably mounted on a distal end of the catheter for deployment of the blood pump.
The blood pump can be endoscopically deployed within a region of interest in an artery or vein, and can be removed without any surgical procedures when its assistance is no longer required.
In the first embodiment of the device, we assist the heart by placing a pump in the descending aorta and removing it when no longer necessary.
This would be designed both for short term and long term use.
The blood pump is mounted in an interior of the stent, and would occupy only a fraction of the stent lumen when expanded.
The diameter of the pump may be no more than the diameter of the femoral artery, 0.
5-1 cm, or 14-16 French, while the diameter of the deployed stent to which it was attached would be slightly more than the diameter of the aorta.
This would provide a means for attaching the pump to the aortic wall, while allowing it to be introduced endovascularly.
The length of the pump would be 5-10 cm, as would the stent.
The stent with the pump is placed, in certain embodiments, in the descending aorta, just beyond the takeoff of the left subclavian artery