Artificial Organs 2012: A Year in Review

Abstract

In this editor's review, articles published in 2012 are organized by category and briefly summarized. We aim to provide a brief reflection of the currently available worldwide knowledge that is intended to advance and better human life while providing insight for continued application of technologies and methods of organ replacement, recovery, and regeneration. As the official journal of the International Federation for Artificial Organs, the International Faculty for Artificial Organs, and the International Society for Rotary Blood Pumps, Artificial Organs continues in the original mission of its founders "to foster communications in the field of artificial organs on an international level." Artificial Organs continues to publish developments and clinical applications of artificial organ technologies in this broad and expanding field of organ replacement, recovery, and regeneration from all over the world. We take this time also to express our gratitude to our authors for offering their work to this journal. We offer our very special thanks to our reviewers who give so generously of time and expertise to review, critique, and especially provide such meaningful suggestions to the author's work whether eventually accepted or rejected, and especially to those whose native tongue is not English. Without these excellent and dedicated reviewers, the quality expected from such a journal could not be possible. We also express our special thanks to our publisher, Wiley Periodicals, for their expert attention and support in the production and marketing of Artificial Organs. We look forward to recording further advances in the coming years.

A review of implantable pulsatile blood pumps: Engineering perspectives

“…53 The Symphony, in comparison to a 40-mL IABP, was capable of providing higher overall coronary, carotid, and aortic flows and eliminating retrograde flow. 11,55 TAHs AbioCor TAH. AbioCor is the first available (approved as humanitarian device) electrohydraulic-driven TAH, and the world's first fully implantable artificial heart with a TET system.…”

“…53 The Symphony, in comparison to a 40-mL IABP, was capable of providing higher overall coronary, carotid, and aortic flows and eliminating retrograde flow. 11,55…”

Thermal behavior and matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation deposition of functional polymeric materials thin films with potential use in optoelectronics

“…The increasing demand for new and permanently improved electronic consumer products requires higher functionality in reduced dimensions [5]. Organic materials can be used as solid matrices [20], in electrochromic devices, energy conversion and storage units, such as: (micro)batteries [24] and fuel cells [25], photochemical solar cells [26], supercapacitors [27], but also in sensors [28], organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) [29], transducers, biosensitive interfaces [30], etc.…”

“…For this study, thin films of poly(vinyl chloride)-(PVC), poly(acrylic acid)-(PAA), and polyaniline-(PAni) were deposited by a matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) technique, as choice materials since they find immediate applications in organic electronics (PAni) [27,31], as embedding matrices (PAA) [20,32], as scaffolds, biocompatible substrates or coatings in medical equipments (PVC) [30,33]. The thermal behavior of these polymers was investigated as it represents an important issue for the stability of the thin films.…”