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15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart

Posted by Soulskill on from the stay-away-from-nausicaans,-kid dept.

An anonymous reader writes "What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you're Dr. Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart, giving the boy another 20-25 years of life. The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant, meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution. Dr. Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90-gram, fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy's left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt."

6 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Re:25 years is permanent? by zaren · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes, I believe you missed the part where the disease he has causes the muscles in his body to stop working. It's a fairly safe bet the muscles that work his lungs or digestive system... or pretty much any other part of his body... will stop working before this heart fails. Someone with this disease is "lucky" to make it to twenty.

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  2. I wish I could feel better about this... by cypherpu · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wish I could feel better about this, but I don't. Most of these artificial hearts require systemic anticoagulation. Otherwise, they generate clots, which can travel to the brain and create a series of strokes, ultimately killing the patient.. Systemic anticoagulation brings it's own set of serious problems (bleeding tendencies, tissue changes, etc). My best wishes for this young man and his family.

  3. Sounds like a left ventricular assist device. by Felgerkarb · · Score: 5, Informative
    I think the media is playing up the 'robotic' and cyborg angle a bit.

    I have only read the linked articles, but the description sounds like a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD. This is a pump that helps the heart push blood, rather than replacing the heart, which is what I generally think of when people talk about artificial hearts. It sounds like the innovation here is the size, its use in a child, and the length of time they plan to use it, since it is generally used as a bridge to transplant.

    I think they are optimistic in thinking they can get 25 years, since we really haven't evolved the material science to have implantable devices for that long without provoking clot formation or scarring, but it sounds like they didn't have a lot of options here.

    1. Re:Sounds like a left ventricular assist device. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I was on a LVAD for a couple weeks. Luckily, my ventricle became stable enough to get off before a transplant was needed. I have two artificial valves and an aortic graft. I was told I could only be on the LVAD for 30 days before having a transplant, and I am 31. I can't imagine an LVAD being used to sustain life for 20-25 years. Besides, the actual LVAD machine is quite large, unless they have portable ones that I am not aware of. I can't see someone leaving the hospital with one.

    2. Re:Sounds like a left ventricular assist device. by GPSguy · · Score: 2, Informative

      The illustration behind the surgeon in the article looks a lot like an impeller-driven left ventricular assist device. It's not an artificial heart, but could, conceivably, be half of one. In the old days, when most VADs were pulsatile, they could effectively replace a non-functioning ventricle and produce pulsatile flow, very much as the heart does. However, they were bulky and had their own problems. Pulseless, continuous flow, impeller-driven pumps are less likely to develop clots on surfaces, which will help the patient in the long term.

      Neither the posting nor the article were long on real facts, though. I don't recall Duschenne's dystrophy having a direct effect on cardiac muscle (but it's been a long time). Striated muscle (and some smooth muscle) degeneration, especially of the respiratory and accessory muscles tends to cause demise. If the heart was also affected by myopathy, then use of a VAD could be either a transient, or "permanent" solution. A surprising number of patients who received VADs as a bridge to allow them to live until a satisfactory donor was found, have been suficiently recovered to no longer require transplantation after weeks or months of service with a left ventricular assist device.

      Although this isn't the exact device shown in the Register article, here's a similar "permanent" citation: http://www.texasheart.org/AboutUs/News/2010-01-21news_FDAapprove.cfm

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  4. your concept of disease by OrangeTide · · Score: 2, Informative

    To be more precise disease is where the body's functions are changed resulting in disruption of vital functions. But if the body was always this way nothing has changed so I could see how you might think it's not a disease. But officially MD is a disease. The definition also applied to things like heart disease, which often has a genetic cause.

    I suspect that the word "disease" has some connotations for you that don't exist for the rest of us, perhaps you should educate yourself further with a simple dictionary to remove this misunderstanding?

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    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire