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The
Next Generation
As
hopes for a total artificial heart (TAH) faded, surgeons worked
to perfect heart transplantation. Today, 86 percent of patients
who receive a donor heart survive for at least one year after
the procedure. More than 70 percent of patients live at least
four years. The problem is that there are just 4,000 donor
hearts available each year, and as many as 700,000 people
who suffer from heart failure. In the face of this shortage,
scientists race to design smaller, sleeker, more efficient
artificial hearts.
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The
Abiocor artificial heart, like a real human heart,
beats approximately 100,000 times per day.
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Like a real human heart, the AbioCor Replacement Heart - designed
by Abiomed in Danvers, MA- has two pumping chambers and valves
that regulate blood flow. The device runs on a battery that
can be recharged through the skin, so no tubes and wires need
pass through the body wall, giving patients maximum mobility
and reducing the risk of infection.
In
January of 2001, the Food and Drug Administration gave Abiomed
permission to begin clinical trials of the AbioCor Replacement
Heart. Five so-called "end-stage" patients - those likely
to die within thirty days and too sick to receive a human
transplant - would receive the heart. On July 2, 2001, a team
led by Drs. Laman A. Gray, Jr. and Robert D. Dowling implanted
an AbioCor heart into the first patient, 58 year-old Robert
Tools, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.
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Alan
finds out just how powerful an artificial heart must
be to do its job.
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Though his doctors estimated he had less than a month left
to live with his failing natural heart, Tools bounced back
quickly after his surgery. After a period of privacy in which
to heal, Tools became something of a media darling, posing
for photos at hamburger and rib joints, enjoying his second
chance at life.
Four more patients were implanted with the AbioCor in 2001.
Five months after his surgery, Tools died from complications
following a clot-induced stroke. But given how sick Tools
had been, the length of time he survived with the AbioCor
and the other patients' progress, the FDA gave Abiomed the
green light to implant five more patients with the experimental
device.
In
subsequent months, two more of the original five recipients
died and the sixth and seventh implant candidates did not
survive surgery. In light of these deaths, Abiomed halted
the clinical trial and are redesigning the heart in an effort
to reduce stroke-inducing clotting.
Meanwhile,
two of the original five AbioCor recipients have continued
to improve. On January 14th, 2002, James Quinn was released
from the hospital 70 days after his surgery. And on April
16th, 2002, Tom Christerson, who received his artificial heart
in September, 2001, finally went home. Abiomed plans to resume
clinical trials in the spring or summer of 2002.
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