A teaching and research simulator for therapeutic embolization.

A teaching machine that simulates intravascular conditions found during a human therapeutic embolization has been constructed. A submersible pump drives fluid through a circuit of tubing. One limb of a Y (a vascular bifurcation) located in this circuit leads to a model arteriovenous malformation. Catheters placed in this limb may introduce embolic materials by various techniques, and those techniques may be learned and practiced under safe and stress-free conditions. Loss of an embolus into the other limb which supposedly leads to normal tissues is caught and displayed by a sieve, providing immediate feedback that a technique error has occurred.