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Australian man survives 100 days with artificial heart
- wileydragonfly 2y agoA very interesting tour is the small museums at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Heart Institute. They were literally making replacement parts on a sewing machine 60 years ago. (On the other hand, they let one of those surgeons practice too far long and he left a sponge in my grandfather during an angioplasty. He was ultimately reopened and cleaned out and died of something else a few years later)
- Willingham 2y agoLooks like the device is powered by a battery carried by the patient that is connected through what is called a ‘driveline’ basically a wire coming out of your belly connecting to the heart. Really amazing stuff here, especially considering failure of the heart is THE most common cause of death in human beings. One day getting an artificial heart at an old age may be as common as a teenager getting braces. https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/monash,-bivacor-led-consortium-to-develop-and-commercialise-world-first-durable-total-artificial-heart https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/monash,-bivacor-led-con...
- 3eb7988a1663 2y agoJust avoid getting into any bar brawls with Nausicaans. (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode) https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Tapestry_(episode) although, the point of the episode was, in hindsight, the fight was the correct move)
- blooalien 2y agoDon't neglect your payments and fall afoul of the Repo-Men either. :P
- somenameforme 2y agoOh man, you gave me goosebumps just thinking about that episode. That is one of the best episodes [1] of any sci-fi, ever, IMO. That episode changed my entire life perspective. Looking at the writer's Wiki [2], he was also behind some amazing DS9 episodes like House of Quark and Rules of engagement. Gah, what happened to sci-fi? Turns out he was even the head guy on For All Mankind. Nobel Prize effect, studio pressure, what is it? [1] - https://ww1.goojara.to/eGJakb https://ww1.goojara.to/eGJakb [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_D._Moore
- olyjohn 2y agoRon D Moore also worked on the remake of Battlestar Galactica. I think one of the first real binge-watched shows that I can think of. He was the guy who pushed for story arcs in DS9, while they were trying so hard to keep the show episodic. Those story arcs were some of the best Trek ever, and I think the success of that, and with the follow up success of BSG really changed TV a lot.
- somenameforme 2y agoAhhh!!! That makes a lot of sense. I had no idea. I ended up catching one of the old Asian bird flus some time back, and grabbed BSG to get through it all. What was going to be a show here and there ended up turning into a binge watch as well. No idea if that was good or bad for getting over that flu, but it sure made it enjoyable! And yeah completely agreed on the various arcs in DS9. I suppose the idea of episodic content was to try to ensure that a viewer didn't feel confused/left out if they ended up missing an episode, but you can do sooo much more with arcs and anyhow, there's always the 'Last time on DS9...' intro spiel. The Dominion/Jem'Hadar/Vorta/Founders were such a memorable and somehow sympathetic (well... in part) antagonist. Somehow thinking about that (as well as the Cardassian/Garik arcs) made me go look up the Chain of Command TNG episode [1]. And yeah, lo and behold, Ron Moore was there too. What a talent. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_Command_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_Command_(Star_Trek:_T...
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- josu 2y agoI wasn't expecting that steampunk look.
- _carbyau_ 2y agoIt is kinda cool looking. But if people can see it in your chest you are doing it wrong.
- elihu 2y agoMy guess is that they put it in some kind of rubbery enclosure before installing it, but who knows? Maybe it's not actually a problem to have hard edges.
- _carbyau_ 2y agoI don't see any untoward sharp edges. Though connecting the main blood pipes are would be an interesting trick to know about. No hose clamps there! A colleague of mine required to have much metal put in his arm bones after an accident. He mentioned it always felt a bit heavy and cold. I can't imagine what this would feel like in your chest.
- keyle 2y agoI know it's crazy. Looks like a car part.
- olyjohn 2y agoDefinitely looks like a small turbocharger!
- abdusco 2y agoCNC'ed out of a block of titanium
- maxglute 2y agoIt looks... very crude.
- xpl 2y agoHow does the device regulate the heartbeat speed? I mean, how does it know that it needs to pump blood faster or slower?
- slicktux 2y agoThat’s a good question! As a layman I would assume there’s no way to read/detect the hormones that would demand acceleration of the heartbeat? So one has to take it easy for the rest of their life? Or maybe there’s a way to manipulate it manually?
- 3eb7988a1663 2y agoIf the heart is no longer the weak link, can you permanently increase level of blood flow to something akin to moderate exertion? Presumably you are now limited by what the veins can handle, but maybe they have more flexible performance characteristics?
- xphos 2y agoLayman, but I imagine if your blood is flowing to fast doesn't help much the lungs have certain diffusion rates, the waste products wouldn't be increased because your not doing as much work. There is probably an optimal point where anymore just doesn't really matter. I beat there is some psychological factors to thought you don't have a beat or pulse that is probably unsettling
- qingcharles 2y agoIIRC this problem affects heart transplants as the nerve that controls the speed of the heart is severed during the operation.
- xpl 2y agoCan't implants read from that nerve? Or the issue is that the "protocol" is hard to reverse?
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- epicureanideal 2y agoLet's hope this improves rapidly every year and can become a convenient, inexpensive temporary replacement in a few decades. I wonder what the progress curve will look like. This time it's 100 days, next year will it be 110 or 200? I wonder what the shape of the curve is?
- jart 2y ago[flagged]
- appleorchard46 2y agoSource? This seems hard to believe and google isn't pulling anything like it up.
- teraflop 2y agoIt's not true at all. A cardioplegia solution is injected into the heart itself to arrest the heartbeat, and to protect it from tissue damage while awaiting transplantation. But this is done after the donor's chest has already been surgically opened, and has nothing at all to do with "paralyzing" them or preventing them from struggling. If they were going to struggle, surely they would do so when the operation started! But no such paralysis is needed, of course, because the donor has already been determined to be brain-dead by that point. As an interesting note, even the basic premise of the preceding comment is not accurate. A small but increasing number of heart transplants are performed as DCD operations, which means the donor's heart stops naturally on its own before being removed: https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/Articles/2022/11/21/13/31/Emerging-Frontier-in-Heart-Transplantation https://www.acc.org/Latest-in-Cardiology/Articles/2022/11/21...
- armenarmen 2y agosorry, so the heart is still beating in the dead donor? The doctors harvesting the heart stops the donors heart from beating? I have to be missing something here. You cannot be saying that doctors stop the donors heart from beating (kill them) before taking the heart.
- symlinkk 2y agoCrazy how slow medicine progresses compared to technology.
- xvector 2y agoI hope it dramatically speeds up as AI improves. ASI is likely only scalable route to solving the medical issues that plague humanity.
- Gigachad 2y agoI imagine the slow link is that you have to actually test stuff in the real world, on people. Who in this case could very easily die if it doesn’t work. Isn’t like programming where you can just keep whacking it until it works.
- worthless-trash 2y agoIts even worse than you think, there are complex and numerous requirement hoops you need to jump through for medical software and hardware. It is not easy.
- im3w1l 2y agoThe question I have is why they they die if it doesn't work. Imagine how much faster we could progress if people didn't when an experiment failed. But how could we even accomplish such a thing? Telemetrics to catch issues early, and redundancy to hold the patient over until the issue can be found and corrected? In this case, two separate mechanical hearts built on different principles hoping they would have different failure modes? Would it even be possible to hook that up correctly? Just brainstorming.
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- alexey-salmin 2y agoWait I thought that was blockchain
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- iancmceachern 2y agoI've worked in this industry (LVADS and artificial hearts) and met Dr. Timms personally several times. He and his team have been working on this for decades. It's real, and good stuff. Congratulations to the whole team, this is the culmination of decades of effort from thousands of people. Well done
- jumperabg 2y agoHow much power does the heart need to pump the liquid and what is it's life expectancy? Any technical specifications for a product that can work in the human body?
- bufferoverflow 2y ago2016: Successful heart transplant after 1374 days living with a total artificial heart https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26819291/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26819291/
- alpaca128 2y agoYeah, I find that confusing too. Recently I heard in a YT video with a cardiologist (Medlife Crisis) that some people in the US lived more than 4 years with an artificial heart. The article calls it the "world’s first implantable rotary blood pump that can act as a complete replacement for a human heart", so maybe there's a difference but the article is written as if this was the first artificial heart ever which it clearly isn't.
- bandrami 2y agoI could have sworn there were artificial hearts in the 1980s, or at least news stories about them
- yesco 2y agoProbably this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbioCor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbioCor They technically worked but they were expensive, painful, and basically just kept you alive on a bed. In essence they were like a more invasive version of the iron lung but required a team to maintain. For this reason while you may have heard it used it various trials with "success" they were considered a failure in the end and rejected by the FDA. I've spoken to some people who worked on it and the feelings are pretty bittersweet. Learning from this, Abiomed later brought a heart pump called the "Impella" to market which works to assist your heart instead of replace it. This device is cool for different reasons and can actually save peoples lives instead of merely prolong them a few years. The new artificial heart in the OP is more sophisticated than the AbioCor, the science keeps improving.
- interludead 2y agoThe Jarvik-7 artificial heart was first implanted in a human patient in 1982. But those early designs were bulky, required external power sources, and were more of a temporary measure
- im3w1l 2y ago> The patient, who declined to be identified, was discharged from the hospital with the implant in February. A donor heart became available to be transplanted in March. This doesn't add up to 100 days.
- mahkeiro 2y agoCarmat a French company has a total heart product for a while in Europe. In February they celebrated the 100 implants, with the longest one lasting 25 month. https://www.carmatsa.com/en/our_product/ https://www.carmatsa.com/en/our_product/ However this is really difficult and the company is struggling financially as the market is rather limited.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoReally sucks a company doing something important like this is struggling. Such kind of company shouldn't need to worry about profits because we know how profit-minded medical breakthroughs look like.
- Traubenfuchs 2y agoEasy to say, but who SHOULD pay for this, lenmeldy or zolgensma? (Compared to those treatments an artificial heart is cheap.) Those easily cost more than the average human earns in their life. Should the public be financially burdened by outrageously expensive research and treatments for rare diseases? When do we say, it‘s enough, your condition is not compatible with life, enjoy some palliative treatment?
- mschuster91 2y ago> Those easily cost more than the average human earns in their life. For this, we have insurance - to distribute the chance of utterly bad luck across all in society.
- david-gpu 2y ago> Should the public be financially burdened by outrageously expensive research and treatments for rare diseases? Yes, precisely because they are rare and thus market forces will fail to provide a treatment. > When do we say, it‘s enough, your condition is not compatible with life, enjoy some palliative treatment? That will vary case by case, depending on how much the public votes in favor of socialized care vs the suffering of these people.
- interludead 2y agoThis is an incredible milestone! And not just for the patient, but for the future of heart failure treatment. The fact that someone was able to walk out of the hospital and live with a fully artificial heart for over 100 days is mind-blowing. Still a long way to go before these could replace transplants entirely, but the progress is undeniable
- mock-possum 2y agoOnly to die at the stroke of midnight on the 101st day
- Miraltar 2y agoOr get it replaced by a donor heart ? Please read at least the subtitle before commenting
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