French develop a new heart

Press, 18 March 1985, Page 26

French develop a new heart

NZPA-Reuter Paris A team of French surgeons, funded largely by Saudi Arabia, has implanted in a heifer a lightweight artificial heart which the team hopes will be available for use in humans within 14 months, said a spokesman for the Stateowned aerospace company, Aerospatiale. The heart is made of carbon-carbon, a lightweight resistant material developed by Aerospatiale using its space technology, and is considerably smaller and lighter than artificial hearts now being used in the United States in human patients. The American versions

can be used only in men, but the lighter French hearts should be suitable for use in women, he said. The heart’s inventor, Didier Lapeyre, said that its revolutionary design “consists very simply of a copy of the fundamental difference between the right and left ventricle,” creating a heart which is asymetrical. The surgery on the heifer, named Denise, was done by a team led by Professor Christian Cabrol, of the Pi-tie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris and including West German and Saudi Arabian surgeons. Although the heart itself had been developed to a fully working level, there was still a problem with its energy source which was external to the' patient and which at present was too large to allow movement, said the spokesman. The research team hopes to miniaturise the energy source so that, when heart implantations in humans start, the whole system will permit the patient full mobility. News of the surgical team’s success came just two days after doctors in Louisville, Kentucky, implanted the world’s third artificial heart in a human recipient. Murray Haydon, a retired car worker, was reported to be recovering well from the operation.