Patent ID: 8444545

Claim:
A ventricular assist device comprising: a sac wrapped around a portion of a heart, the sac having at least one inflatable chamber for compressing a patient's heart responsive to inflation of said inflatable chamber; a driver fluidly coupled to said inflatable chamber of said sac and inflating said inflatable chamber in correspondence with a signal representative of a cardiac rhythm of the patient; a blood pump fluidly coupled to said driver for periodically displacing blood therefrom responsive to fluid being directed thereto from said driver, said blood pump having a first compartment from which blood is displaced; and a manifold having a first pathway and a second pathway intersecting with each other at an angle, said first pathway being implanted into an aorta of the patient for aortic blood flow therethrough and said second pathway being coupled to a blood inlet-outlet port in fluid communication with said first compartment of said blood pump, wherein during a systolic phase said inflatable chamber inflates and blood flows into said first compartment from the patient's aorta through the blood inlet-outlet port, and during a diastolic phase said inflatable chamber deflates and said blood pump displaces blood from said first compartment into the patient's aorta through the blood inlet-outlet port.