Bionic Human: 1st Fully Implanted Human Heart

InnerCityCaching writes "Doctors at the University of Louisville have removed a patients heart and replaced it with an artificial pump that has no wires to the outside world. One of five FDA approved test implants, neither the hospital nor Abiomed Inc., would confirm or deny the surgery." This is bigger news than it sounds - the older artificial hearts had massive battery and battery needs, while this heart is charged by placing coils on the skin. As we get closer to creating more artificial body parts, the issues of batteries, much like powering laptops for longer times become more critical and the solutions become more intrinsically interesting. Too bad they can't use code morphing to make better use of battery life. *grin*

Comments

Re:"this is bigger news than it sounds..."

[GPSguy]

I spent a number of years in the articifial heart field while at Texas Heart Institute. It really *IS* big news.

All the artificial heart implants in humans have been tethered implants. The patient has had to be tied to a console or power source, electrical or air, with no more than brief respites of untethered activity. The devices have been harsh on quality of life, and a whole host of physiologic functions. They have not allowed normal interaction with other humans, and those few patients who've ventured outside the walls of the hospital were making brief visits away, not returning to the world.

The Abiomed pump is small enough to reasonably be implanted, and reliable enough to expect it to work well. The centers selected for the initial implants have sufficient experience with animal implantation, AND various human procedures of a more mundane variety, to expect them to be able to manage the patients well, indeed.

We're about 9 years behind where I thought we'd get to with a really viable, implantable heart, mainly because of the costs necessary to support this sort of research. It's long overdue.

I suspect that the 125,000 potential patients Abiomed cited in the article may be an understatement. Doesn't matter. If this allows some patients who were dying waiting for a transplant...or who were deemed not good candidates for the scarce resource of a donated heart... a shot at a good quality life and a time extension, this is WONDERFUL news.

Makes me wish I'd stayed in the game.

Would you really want a beta test model?

[tenzig_112]

I won't even install a 1.0 video card for fear that my computer will explode. Can you imagine what the beta testers notes would look like?

On several occasions, when I use a cell phone on my left side, I black out. This is unfortunate as I tend to use my phone when I can't get to a land line- i.e. when I'm driving. Have someone look into that.

So, it's not for me. However, Dick Cheney coud use one of these.