Beating more than 2.5 million times over the course of an average lifetime, the human heart is the hardest working organ in the body- and the most vital. Its failure is often the event that ends our lives. Each year in the United States, approximately 45,000 people need heart transplants. But with fewer than 3,000 donor hearts available each year, the artificial heart has long been one of the Holy Grails of medicine. Though early experimentation left the public disenchanted with artificial hearts, a new generation of man-made devices promises to extend the lives of hundreds of thousands in the coming decades.
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Early Attempts

In 1964, faced with sky-high levels of heart disease among the general population, the National Heart Institute allocated $600,000 for the development of a permanent artificial heart by 1970. By 1969, Dr. Denton Cooley of Baylor Medical College in Texas implanted the first artificial heart into an Illinois man.

The two-chambered device functioned much like a natural heart with one big exception. It was powered by enormous air pumps outside of the body, using hoses to pass through the patient's body wall and into the circulatory system.

Haskell Karp's artificial heart kept him alive for two and half days until a donor heart was found; however, Karp died shortly after the transplant.

Karp's widow described her husband's condition during the 64 hours he depended on the artificial heart to the BBC.

		In 1964, Haskell Karp lived for just three days supported by this Liotta artificial heart.

"I saw an apparatus going into the arms, the hands, the feet. He could not say anything. I don't think that he was really conscious. I see him lying there breathing, and knowing that within his chest is a man-made implement where there should be a God-given heart."

The incident was not without controversy. Cooley had performed the operation without permission from any regulatory body or even his mentor, Dr. Michael DeBakey. In the wake of the bad publicity, Cooley resigned from Baylor, and the public began to consider the artificial heart more monstrous than miraculous.

Photos: Texas Heart Institute