Safety Testing of Left Ventricular Vent Valves

Vent vacuum relief valves (VRVs) are used to limit the negative pressure at the ventricular vent catheter tip as well as prevent reversal of blood flow and prevention of air embolism. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of three commercially available ventricular vent valves. The negative pressure at which the vent valve opened was measured at the valve inlet using high-fidelity pressure transducers. Also, the flow rate at which air entrainment occurred due to valve opening was recorded. Using a 51.5 cm column of saline, the resistance for each valve was calculated. The mean ± SD opening negative pressures were -231.3 ± 35.2 mmHg for the Quest Medical valve, -219.8 mmHg ± 17.2 for the Sorin valve, and -329.6 · 38.0 mmHg for the Terumo valve. The red Quest Medical valve opened at a lower flow (1.44 ± .03 L/min) than the dark blue Sorin valve (2.93 ± .01 L/min) and light blue LH130 Terumo valve (2.36 ± .02 L/min). The Sorin valve had the least resistance of 34.1 dyn-s/cm, followed by the Terumo LH130 valve resistance of 58.1 dyn·s/cm5, and the Quest Medical VRV-II valve with a resistance of 66.5 dyn·s/cm. We found that the valves are significantly different in the negative pressure generated. Understanding the limitations of these devices is important to reduce the occurrence of adverse events associated with venting and to select the best device for a specific clinical application.