Types of Artificial Hearts
Artificial hearts are devices that try to mimic either all or a part of the heart’s function. They are generally used for people who are not eligible for heart transplants. There are mainly two broad types of artificial hearts. There are Cardiac (heart) assist devices [CAD] and Total Artificial Hearts (TAH). CAD’s help the heart; they don’t do all the work for it. CAD’s are usually composed of left, right, or a combination of ventricular assist devices. When these devices are used the heart is not removed from the body, but rather the device takes the place of the heart’s components.
TAH’s are a little more complex in their nature. When these are used the heart must be completely removed from the body, and these devices are put in. these are similar to getting a human donor heart. TAH’s have decent reliability and are widely used in current times.
William Kolff in the early 1900’s invented the first TAH and from then on newer models were developed. The most widely known type of artificial heart is the Jarvik 7. This was invented by Dr. Robert Jarvik in 1982, so until relatively recently we had no replacement for a heart. The first patient it was used on ended up dying in only 112 days. The pump itself worked fine it was just its meeting with the body that caused problems. Currently Dr. Jarvik is working on a new type of artificial heart that is the size of one’s thumb. He will be calling this the Jarvik 2000.
A third type of artificial heart that is not yet been tested through time but has engineers rigorously working on is the electric heart. Dr. Michael DeBarkey has been the first to use this new device, but the public still has yet to see if it works well.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blartificialheart.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artifical_heart
http://www.texasheart.org/Research/Devices/j7tah.cfm
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3 comments:
According to another blog put up here , purely about the Jarvik heart, it says that it only lasts for about 10 months, perhaps more. Do the CADs last longer, and if so, does this make them better than TAHs?
How is the Jarvik 2000 heart different from previous artificial hearts aside from its small size?
Carrie, some of the things that I have found in my research are that the Jarvik 2000 is totally silent because it has only one moving part, the battery life is 8-10 hours, and it is manually programmable. As long as the patient is informed and responsible, a manually programmable LVAD can be much more effective than one run by a computer.
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