ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32392, 3 September 1970, Page 11

ARTIFICIAL HEARTS

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) MADRID, Sept. 1. A Spanish medical team that included the son-in-law of General Francisco Franco was preparing to make the first artificial heart implant in Europe, a member of the research team said today.

Dr Salvador Liotta, of the Cardivascular Centre of the National Nursing School of the Thorax, in Madrid, said that his centre or the Texas Heart Institute of Houston, Texas, would be the first to attempt the implant. He said that both had artificial plastic hearts ready foi the operation.

The surgery would be done “when circumstances call for it” and the implant would take place either in Madrid or Houston.

Dr Liotta, aged 45, an Argentinian, said that Dr Cristobal Martinez Bordiu, General Franco’s son-in-law, probably would do the implant if the operation took place in Spain. Dr Liotta has co-ordinated research between the two centres which signed a research and co-operation agreement earlier this year. He said that Dr Denton Cooley, of Houston, probably would perform the implant if it was done first in the United States.

Dr Liotta, who with his brother, Domingo, began research on artificial hearts in Cordoba. Argentina, in 1959, said

that the plastic heart could function indefinitely.

101 b Suitcase The user, however, must carry with him a suitcase weighing about 101 b that supplied electric energy to pump blood through the artificial heart. He said that Dr Cooley implanted a plastic heart temporarily in a patient in April, 1969, as the patient was awaiting a heart transplant. The artificial heart functioned perfectly for 64 hours before the natural heart was transplanted. The patient died later. Dr Liotta noted that throughout the world several doctors were working on artificial hearts, but described the plastic heart at the Spanish centre as the most advanced in Europe.