New type of artificial heart device implanted in Greece

[Angel]

A new type of artificial heart device, in which the only moving part is suspended in an electromagnetic field and does not touch any other part, has been implanted in a 67-year-old man in Greece.

It is smaller, expected to last longer and to cause fewer clotting problems than similar devices.

A team of LDS Hospital doctors and nurses returned this week from Greece, where they participated in the March 8 operation.

The device, called the WorldHeart rotary ventricular assist device, was developed in Utah and is made by WorldHeart Corp., based in Oakland, Calif.
WorldHeart anticipate getting Food and Drug Administration approval to use the device in a clinical study in the United States early next year, but meanwhile it will be tested in Europe.

"It's a pet peeve to have to take technology and give first access to patients out of the United States, but that's the nature of our regulatory process," Dr. James Long, director of the artificial heart program at LDS Hospital and a member of the surgical team that went to Greece, told a news conference Thursday.

"Europeans are more aggressive ... and understand risk," he said. "Our reason for being there is to learn how we can refine it."

Long said the patient had a long history of congestive heart failure that likely would have killed him, but is now doing well.

The patient needs the assistance while his heart gets strong enough to work without it, Long said. The device is not designed to be temporary for all patients.

The device is smaller than similar pumps, allowing it to be used in smaller adults and adolescents, and a tiny version is being developed for use in infants and children.

The WorldHeart VAD was described by the hospital as the only "bearingless, fully magnetically levitated implantable pump under study in clinical trials."
An estimated 4.7 million Americans have congestive heart failure, which kills about 300,000 people each year.

Long said that when the heart failure becomes severe, patients can try to become one of the 2,000 to get a heart transplant in the United States each year, rely on a VAD of some sort or accept that they will die.

Utah has had a long history with the artificial organs, including the 1982 implant of the Jarvik-7 total artificial heart in Barney Clark at University Hospital.

Clark died 112 days later, but doctors and engineers continued exploring how to improve the technology.