Development of Cerebral Perfusion Technology

Medtronic is a global medical device company and leader in patient monitoring technologies that has a key area of interest for developing technology to effectively monitor patients’ cerebral blood flow (i.e., perfusion) in relation to systemic blood pressure.
Maintaining a prescribed intra-operative blood pressure range for patients does not guarantee a healthy cerebral blood flow, as they are two independent feedback mechanisms. Studies have demonstrated that current intra-operative blood pressure ranges may lead to an unhealthy cerebral blood flow in some patients which indicates that a healthy blood pressure range is patient specific. As a patient’s blood pressure begins to increase or decrease outside of this healthy range, so does cerebral blood flow in commensurate fashion begin to move outside of a healthy blood flow range. Sub-optimal cerebral blood flow perfusion during surgery predisposes patients to a higher risk for delirium or stroke. TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Philip Ainslie

Student:

Ryan Hoiland

Partner:

Medtronic of Canada

Discipline:

Kinesiology

Sector:

Medical devices

University:

Program: