ARTIFICIAL HEART

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23085, 9 July 1938, Page 12

ARTIFICIAL HEART

success Claimed LINDBERGH'S RESEARCH " BREATHING " ACHIEVED"^.,! | FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT] SAN FRANCISCO, June 18 According to Dr. Richard Bine, of the department of surgery of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, the inechanica.l heart which Colonel Charles Lindbergh constructed to keep organs alive outside the body has "learned" to breathe. Up to now, says Dr. Bing i n the current issue of the magazine Science, the Lindbergh heart "perfusion pump" is its technical namehad to be fed on dissolved oxygen instead of assimilating the oxygen from the blood, as body tissues do. Now an assimilation method has been developed, permitting the robot heart really to breathe. This breathing ability is important to the famous flier's invention in keeping alive vital organs like kidneys, pancreas and nerve tissue, which require large amounts of oxygen for survival. It is not essential to artificial maintenance of life where less oxygen ig needed —such as thyroid gland, skeletal muscle and intestine. Explanation of the Proceas The breathing of the Lindbergh heart, as Dr. Bing describes it, is a simplified version of the human breathing system. It was explained that human bodies take in oxygen through the lungs. In the lining of the lungs the oxygen is taken up into the blood, where it is combined with other substances to form hemoglobin, hemocyanin and other pigments which colour the bloodstream. The bloodvessels carry these substances through the body, until they reach the tissue, where the. oxygen is taken out and used. In the mechanical heart, the liing fuction of the body's breathing is eliminated. At first, Lindbergh and his collaborator in the development of tL j heart, Dr. Alexis Carrel, tried to begin the process by introducing oxygen through red blood cells. This, Dr. Bing said, did not work, because the cells produced methemoglobin after six or eight hours, making perfusion for several days impossible. When perfusion stopped the artificial life process stopped. A Difficulty Overcome

Attempts to prevent the formation of the trouble-causing methemoglobin by adding other substances —glutathione and ascorbis acid—were unsuccessful, so the heart was fed oxygen which already had been dissolved. But to keep kidneys, pancreas and nerve tissues alive, more oxygen was needed than could be provided in this direct way. So Dr. Bing set out to find another way. Instead of hemoglobin, he tried heniocyanin as the carrier This, he now reported, eliminates the trouble. Not onlv does it supply more oxygen than the present method, he said, but it is "superior for perfusion over long periods." And the organs which are being kept alive artificially can breathe it Human Heart Photographed At the convention of the American Medical Association of .America ' held in San Francisco, American specialists learned for the first time how to photograph the living human heart in all its major details, so that hereafter they may see exactly what is wrong and what should be treated in cardiac cases. The process consists of injecting into the veins a substance which causes the bloodstream to become visible in X-ray pictures. Each section of the heart and the veins and arteries about it stand out noticeably in the photographs. This was announced before the American Heart Association by its originators, Dr. George P. Robb and Dr. Israel Steinberg, of Bellvie Hospital and New York University.

Previously the heart has appeared as a sort of white blotch, with little or no detail, in X-ray films. Under the new process its size, shape, position, its four compartments, its valves and even the thickness of its walls are disclosed. The two doctors eventually showed before the American Medical Association convention how the injections are handled.