Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a panel chaired by Dr. Alan Kahn and includes this introduction followed by a review of the fundamentals of blood pressure transducers, zero drift, and calibration problems, and discusses with two examples of the uses of implant units in chronic animal studies. It begins with a survey of applications of indwelling devices. The book reviews transducer design and development and transduction principles, followed by examples of newly developed devices based on these concepts. The concept of bringing designers, developers, manufacturers, and users together to discuss problems of mutual concern quickly matured into a workshop. The workshop has as its primary goal the bringing together of designers, builders and users of indwelling pressure transducers, so as to evaluate their status. A reasonably list of transducers, suitable for biomedical applications, was added to an abbreviated section on industrial considerations.