No pulse? No problem - turbine artificial heart


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A device to keep one going untill a transplant - or down the road an engineered - heart is available. Not in fullhuman trials yet, but I bet it gets fast tracked....

Link....

A pulse no longer necessary for life

(PhysOrg.com) -- While most people connect a pulse and a heartbeat to life, Dr. Billy Cohn and Dr. Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute have found a way to keep the blood circulating and extend the life of patients while taking away their pulse.

Researchers have spent years trying to perfect an artificial heart that does not break down, wear out, or cause blood clots and infections. However, Cohn and Frazier have developed an artificial heart, of sorts, that seems to do the trick. The only catch is it isn?t a heart. There is no heartbeat. There is no pulse. If a patient had one of their new hearts, the patient would appear dead. Attaching an EKG would return a flat-line.

The new device uses technology that has been used to aid failing hearts since the 1980s. A ventricular assist device, or VAD, is a circulatory device designed to assist either the right or left ventricle of the heart. The VADs have a rotor of blades that circulate and push the blood forward in a continuous flow.

While VADs are typically used to help one section of the heart, Cohn and Frazier hooked two of these VADs together so they would essentially work as both sides of the heart. They began working on calves and currently have an 8-month-old calf named Abigail who has no heart. Her heart was removed and in its place the doctors inserted their new pump device. Abigail is a healthy and active young calf, however, according to any medical cardiac tests, she would appear dead.

Cohn and Frazier, after testing on 38 calves, wanted to take this new pump one step further and test it on a human patient. This is where Craig Lewis, a 55-year-old man who was dying from amyloidosis comes in. His heart had become so damaged from the disease that doctors had only given him about 12 hours to live. Lewis and his wife agreed to let the doctors try the new artificial heart pump to try and extend his life, if even for a short time. The doctors inserted the new pumps and Lewis did recover and had another month of life before the disease took other organs. His new heart however worked flawlessly.

Cohn and Frazier still have much work to do before the new heart will be available. A final design must be determined, a manufacturer must be found and they must apply for FDA approval. Results show amazing promise and may be the new future in artificial hearts.

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I hope this device will work better than anything currently available. By that article it sounds promising, but can you imagine if someone with one of those fainted or something, and a medic tried to shock start their heart? ouch!

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No pulse would be pretty weird, but this is a smart use of existing technology if it can help so many people.

Well done to Craig Lewis for putting himself forward as a test subject, I hope in his last few days this gave him he could end his life in the way he wanted

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So I take it there would be limitations and not a full replacement. Like running and exercise would be a problem unless the machine can automatically detect when the blood needs to be pumped faster.

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So I take it there would be limitations and not a full replacement. Like running and exercise would be a problem unless the machine can automatically detect when the blood needs to be pumped faster.

I was thinking about that too, but their are a lot of things that cause the heart to pump harder.

. fear <-- without a heartbeat are you fearless, or a stone cold killer? I bet with one of these someone could be a really good sniper.

. excitement

. love <-- you would be a real hit with the vampire loving goth chicks lol

. physical stuff

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I suppose, given some time it will be able to interpret electrical signals from brain that ask to release (formerly) heartbeat controlling hormones (and feedback "roger that", if it's necessary).

*cough* I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

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This would be temporary support until a transplant were available, be it from a donor, animal clone (pig with the patients marker genes) or one printed using cell cultures.

The printed option is getting closer as a US team at Wake Forest is already printing blood vessels, bones and prototype kidneys. The kidney printing was recently demonstrated at a TED conference. The machine was humming away at the back of the stage and a non-vascularized scaffold for the organ was presented to the audience on cue. Work continues, and there is no reason a heart couldn't be done.

This team is already growing synthetic bladders which are being transplanted into humans. They're also working on bio-engineered heart valves.

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