Ask an Expert: Artificial Devices Used in Heart Care
Q. What can you tell me about artificial hearts, and artificial devices that help the heart work? Are these becoming more and more common?
Answer from Dr. Jeanne Phillips, cardiologist and medical director of Providence Heart and Vascular Institute's Center for Advanced Heart Disease: Yes, artificial devices are making a significant difference in helping patients who need a transplant survive until a donated heart becomes available.
The average wait for a heart transplant is 4 months to 6 months. In the past, many people died during that waiting period. But artificial hearts and devices that help the heart pump blood are significantly improving survival rates. Some patients with artificial heart devices have survived for as long as one year.
The left ventricular assist device (LVAD), a surgically-implanted mechanical device that helps the heart pump blood, has substantially increased the number of people who survive the wait for transplant. These devices have improved dramatically in recent years, and advancements continue to develop on a steep curve. Early LVAD models hooked up to a hydraulic power console that was fairly big and cumbersome; it was about like pushing a television around. But newer models are electrically powered, and simply attach to a battery belt on the patient’s waist. A very new model is totally enclosed in the skin, and patients simply recharge them each morning through a sort of battery-plug at the skin level.
Artificial hearts won’t offer a permanent solution to a human organ transplant any time soon, but these devices are also rapidly becoming more effective. Artificial heart recipients are surviving for periods unthinkable even 10 years ago.
Of course, the best way to solve the problem of helping patients survive to transplant would be to increase our human donor pool. The number of people who need an organ transplant of any kind for outnumber registered organ donors – and the population of people with end-stage heart disease continues to increase.
