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15-Year-Old Boy Fitted With Robotic Heart
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."
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.