Artificial heart useful as stop-gap measure

Press, 25 February 1987, Page 42

Artificial heart useful as stop-gap measure

NZPA-Reuter Boston The Jarvik-7 artificial heart, which has had limited success as a permanent heart substitute, is useful as a stop-gap while a patient awaits a donated organ, according to a report by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. They have used the mechanical heart as a temporary replacement in nine patients who were hours away from death when a natural heart was not available for transplant. The artificial heart kept eight of the nine alive until donors could be found. Two patients died after getting a trans-

plant. "In properly selected cases, direct benefit to the patient can be obtained when the Jarvik-7 artificial heart is used as a bridge to transplantation,” the doctors said.

The need for such a bridge is becoming greater as more medical -centres are doing heart transplants and vying for the few hearts available for donation.

The waiting time for a donated heart rose from five days in 1980, when five centres in the United States were doing heart transplants, to more than 42 days in 1986, when 60 centres performed the surgery.

In the University of Pittsburgh study, published in the “New England Journal of Medicine,” patients who received the mechanical heart were given top priority for a donated heart.

The patients had the artificial hearts for no more than 18 days. Even so, the hearts began collecting clots around some of the valves, a condition that could have led to stroke, the researchers said.

Of the five men who have had the Jarvik-7 implanted in their chests as a permanent alternative to a heart transplant, none lived more than 620 days.