(Or More Correctly, On Your Back!)
Waiting in the line at the bank is often a heart stopping moment – ‘I have HOW much left?!’ But as I was watching Sky News I found out that someone has finally been transplanted with a portable artificial heart made my own heart speed up with excitement. THIS is big. THIS is news.
Waiting in the line at the bank is often a heart stopping moment – ‘I have HOW much left?!’ But as I was watching Sky News I found out that someone has finally been transplanted with a portable artificial heart made my own heart speed up with excitement. THIS is big. THIS is news.
In a hospital in Cambridge on the ninth of June, Mr Green became the first UK patient to receive a portable artificial heart implant. The operation took 6 hours and the implant seems to be working successfully as Mr Green’s symptoms decline.
This plastic device is a temporary measure while the patient awaits a real donor. The transplant itself is a plastic device. It replaces the ventricles of the heart, which are the two large, lower chambers of the heart. These chambers pump blood to the lungs and the whole body. The operation involved moving the failing ventricles from the patient, and attaching the artificial ventricles to the heart by plastic tubes.
But how is it powered, you ask? It does not contain any motors or electrical parts but is run by a power supply that is carried outside the body. Normally, a patient with a failing heart would have to be kept in the hospital with a large, fixed machine supplying power to the artificial parts. This new device, although heavy at 14lbs, allows Mr Green freedom as he waits.
There have been other artificial heart devices, but these were normally to help a single damaged ventricle. An example would be the Jervik-7 Artificial Heart that was used in the 1980s. But this new device is the first case where the patient can return home. It cannot be used indefinitely, but is instead termed as a ‘bridge-to-transplant’ device.
This may sound like something out of The Terminator or I Robot, and perhaps it is. I imagine this is this is the beginning of a long series of discoveries and innovations that will make us more and more reliant on artificial parts to replace our failing ones. This portable heart just gave new meaning to wearing your heart on your sleeve…
Credits: Various News Articles,
Tex Heart Inst J. 2010; 37(2): 149–158.
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