After 20 years of work on this extraordinary device, doctors from Sydney implanted a heart made of titanium. He was in such good shape that he was discharged from the hospital. Shortly afterwards he was implanted with a real heart from a deceased donor. Titanium's heart uses a rotor for pumping blood, so the patient lives, although there is no pulse.
Pictures from a six-hour operation, which took place at the end of November last year, doctors from the Holy Wincent Hospital in Sydney only revealed now because they did not know how the fate of a 40-year-old man from New South Wales would collapse, who wants to remain anonymous.
– He suffered from heart failure. He could not pass a distance longer than 10-15 meters, because he was starting to lack breath – says prof. Christopher Hayward from the Saint Wincenty Hospital in Sydney.
Australian doctors implanted an artificial, titanium heart. The patient survived 104 days with him, i.e. three and a half months. In February he felt so well that he was even discharged home. At the beginning of March he returned to the hospital for a natural heart transplant from the deceased donor. This is a great success.
Work on an artificial heart from titanium lasted over 20 years
– The goal is to restore patients of normal quality of life. He just returned to a normal life outside the hospital. Maybe in the future we will not have to invite these patients to a transplant again, but we will allow them to function permanently with an artificial heart – indicates Dr. Daniel Timms, an artificial heart inventor and founder of Bivacor.
Work on a titanium heart lasted over 20 years. – It's an incredibly simple device. You have to sew in the atrials of the heart. Then just click and the drive system turns on. Then we disconnect the patient from the lung-seer, which supports him alive during surgery. The pump takes over the control and ready – explains Dr. Paul JANSZ, transplant surgeon.
The Australian heart, like the French, does not work pulsation, but pumps blood with a rotor. The patient has no pulse. Unfortunately, we do not have such a Polish counterpart, although its creation 24 years ago in TVN's “Facts” was announced by the famous cardiac surgeon Professor Zbigniew Religa.
– If the money is, from today we assume that there is money, I hope that within two years the first Polish patient will have such an artificial chamber or artificial heart implanted – said prof. Zbigniew Religa.
Religa: Downloading the heart to the transplant was contrary to what you thoughtTvn24
We actually have artificial Polish chambers. We work with the French. That's enough and that's all – the son of Zbigniew Religa, Grzegorz Religa, also a doctor, leaves no illusions.
It follows that we will not have such an independent Polish artificial heart. – I think it will not arise. There are relatively or very few indications for the use of an artificial heart – comments Dr. Grzegorz Religa, director of the Institute of Heart Prostheses from the Foundation for the Development of Cardiac Surgery prof. Zbigniew Religa.
Financial outlays for the creation and implementation of such a device would have to be huge.
Source of the main photo: Enex