Heart With No Beat Offers Hope Of New Lease On Life

[Islander]

by CARRIE FEIBEL
June 19, 2011

The search for the perfect artificial heart seems never-ending. After decades of trial and error, surgeons remain stymied in their quest for a machine that does not wear out, break down or cause clots and infections.

But Dr. Billy Cohn and Dr. Bud Frazier at the Texas Heart Institute say they have developed a machine that could avoid all that with simple whirling rotors — which means people may soon get a heart that has no beat.

Inside the institute's animal research laboratory is an 8-month-old calf with a soft brown coat named Abigail. Cohn and Frazier removed Abigail's heart and replaced it with two centrifugal pumps.

"If you listened to her chest with a stethoscope, you wouldn't hear a heartbeat," says Cohn. "If you examined her arteries, there's no pulse. If you hooked her up to an EKG, she'd be flat-lined."

The pumps spin Abigail's blood and move it through her body.

"By every metric we have to analyze patients, she's not living," Cohn says. "But here you can see she's a vigorous, happy, playful calf licking my hand."

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/13/137029...cc=es-20110619

[Reesacat]

That is absolutely fascinating!

[mellowsong]

Somebody was able to think outside the box!!! Absolutely fascinating

[Maurya]

Sounds like an old fashioned Mazda engine to me...