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Science

Bionic Human: 1st Fully Implanted Human Heart 100

Posted by Hemos from the more-interesting-than-it-sounds dept.
InnerCityCaching writes "Doctors at the University of Louisville have removed a patients heart and replaced it with an artificial pump that has no wires to the outside world. One of five FDA approved test implants, neither the hospital nor Abiomed Inc., would confirm or deny the surgery." This is bigger news than it sounds - the older artificial hearts had massive battery and battery needs, while this heart is charged by placing coils on the skin. As we get closer to creating more artificial body parts, the issues of batteries, much like powering laptops for longer times become more critical and the solutions become more intrinsically interesting. Too bad they can't use code morphing to make better use of battery life. *grin*
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Bionic Human: 1st Fully Inplanted Human Heart More

Bionic Human: 1st Fully Inplanted Human Heart

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  • Left and right wing wackos (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The left wing wackos now say that Bush isn't the president and Cheney really is.

    Before this, the right-wing wackos said that Hillary was in charge and Bill wasn't.

  • Additional Features (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The new heart also comes with:
    * a cradle for easy computer interface. Download MP3s and more!
    * free heart charger for the car. Plugs into your cigarrete lighter
    * alarm clock. Wake up to the sound of speeding heart.
    * snooze button. Impress your friends at the party how you can stop your heart!
    * embedded webserver. Check your heart rythm online!
    * and more!

  • Re:Too bad they cant use older technology. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember an atomic battery works like this; radiation from radioactive material is shined on a phosphor that converts it to light and then a solar cell is used to generate the electric power.

  • Re:Too bad they cant use older technology. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are a few different types of nuclear batteries. They fall into two categories: Heat and Particle Emission. In the heat versions, the breakdown of the radioactive element produces heat. That heat is then either used to heat a thermoelectric junction (thermopile) or, in the case of larger batteries, to run a stirling, or rankin? cycle engine, or steam turbine genenerator.

    The particle emission varieties use the particles emitted from the radioactive decay to ionoize a gas, which is then discharged through electrodes. Another variation uses the particles to push electrons across a PN junction in a semiconductor. (Essentially, strapping a solar cell onto a block of radioactive material.)

  • == The patient has had to be tied to a console or
    == power source, electrical or air, with no more
    == than brief respites of untethered activity.

    That turns out not to be the case.
    There is this guy:

    http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/ne ws id%5F1410000/1410705.stm

    The Jarvik 2000 rocks.
  • My dad is recovering in St Louis after having a ventrical assist heart pump installed. He's 70 years old, otherwise in good health, but is old enough to not be a candidate for a new heart transplate.

    Essentially these new types of technologies are the only hope for a lot of people in heart failure.

    If I remember correctly his pump(and this new artifical heart probably uses the same power) has an internal 1 hour battery, runs off of external 4 hour worn battery packs, and plugs into an AC outlet unit that can hold a 12 hour charge.

    And while a 4 hour "timer" for being away from home may not sound like much, it can mean a 500% improvement in the quality of life for most of these people whose low heart output would otherwise restrict them to the home(and eventually bed).

    This is all new territory, no one really knows the long term effects this tech will have(for example my dad no longer has a pulse, his blood flows in a steady stream from the pump and no one knows if this will mess with the body or the mind). These guys are the ultimate Beta testers.
  • Some pacemakers had a nuclear battery. I am not sure exactly whst types but this [one.net] link talks about nuclear pacemakers being just thrown in the trash by funeral homes. Couldn't you gang up 2-3 of these and generate enough power? that way battery life is no longer an issue (well except for every 5-10 years for a fuel rod replacement !)
  • Last week PBS repeated its show about the artificial heart industry.
    Except most of their technology was heart-assist.
    The heart muscle stays in, even if it doesn't do
    much.

    The showed one patient waiting for a transplant
    who had about a dozen spare batteries in reserve.
    There are "Semi-portable" meaning you can go away
    from the main console for a few hours at a time.
    But you need to sleep near it for maximum safety.
  • Since most of this nuclear material was gotten from the environment anyways, I don't see the harm. Radioactive materials are as naturally occuring as other materials.

  • Re:Anonymous, indeed (Score:3)

    by ethereal ( 13958 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:55AM (#111397) Journal

    Hey, don't be knockin' Dick Cheney - without him, nothing would stand between W and the presidency :)

  • Re:NPR (Score:3)

    by rleyton ( 14248 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:49AM (#111398) Homepage
    In the article itself, it reads:

    Abiomed wants to observe a ''quiet period'' with no media comment so the patient can recover with his or her family in private, and so the surgical team can devote all its energy to the operation and patient care, Ed Berger, an Abiomed spokesman, has said over the past several months.

    Stressing again that he was not confirming or denying that the implant had taken place, Berger said yesterday that Abiomed and the surgical team had agreed to comment only when they were sure they could ''meet the demands of the press without compromising patient care.''

    Whilst this development in heart surgey is exciting, I figure it'd be rather bizarre, and possibly very counter-productive, for the poor patient to become the subject of a (possibly) intrustive press campaign, whilst they battles with their recovery.

  • Tried to make an "Uncle Ben's Rice Bowl" for lunch. After I hit the START button on the microwave, I woke up under a large dent in the wall across the kitchen. Do I need a new Windows?

    --
  • I'd laugh except it just wasn't that funny.

    Good comedy consists of wit, irony and most importantly, delivery. Neither of these does your post have.

    Try coming down off that 6-can Mt Dew high before you hit the 'Submit' button.

    ~dlb
  • That's exactly what I thought when I read this. How do they ensure a reliable power supply (i.e. uptime...) over some years? There won't be much time left in the case of a sudden failure.
  • Am I the only one who thinks that tossing active nuclear material, regardless of how decayed, in the trash is not the best thing for the environment? Even if it goes into the biohazard waste to be incenerated, that's not much better.

    -Bill
  • How can doctors do this to heart patients. Charging the heart's battery with a coil. Don't they know that electro-magnetic radiation causes cancer?! Or is that only when it is produce by big, powerful corporations or forced upon us through cell phones?

    I get so confused sometimes.

  • Humor. Sarcasm. Laugh. HA!HA!

    Geesh!

    There is no evidence that power lines or cell phones cause cancer. EMR is permeates you constantly. The people who scream, "IT'LL KILL ALL THE LITTLE KIDDIES IN THE SCHOOLYARD", are alarmist idiots looking for attention. Hence, it is funny that what these people see as being so dangerous will enable a lot of people to have a much better life.

    So LAUGH, damn-it!!

  • It's decay generates heat, which is used to generate electricity.
  • Article was in the dead tree version... I think this link will do the trick:
    http://www.msnbc.com/news/588549.asp

    Picture (probably will not work, but, it's duplicated in the above link):
    http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/1ef1542396c1 07 /www.msnbc.com/news/983460.gif

    I hadn't gotten the impression, from the report, that it was ready for human use. I remember reading it had to be tested and was years away from approval. Thus, it's probably not the /same/ technology, but, it is related.

  • I was checking up on CNN where one of the company reps had this to say, "One of the key issues as a population that we have to address is what are we willing to pay for these new technologies," explained Oz. "I think that we should expect to spend about $70,000 per year to keep someone alive. Not twice that, but also not half that. If we have that rational expectation and insist on getting that quality for our money, I think we'll be happy." Maybe it's me, but keeping the cost of saving someones life at 70,000 a year seems a bit steep, especially when the more of these devices one produces the cheaper it should become (see computer prices 1981 - 2001). I'm thinking if this thinbg flies, Abicor is going to keep it's prices artifically high. That my friends is crap.
  • For pete's sake. He spends tens of thousands of dollars on a new heart, and then doesn't bother to buy a power supply that you can plug into the wall.

    For my little electric car I take my battery charger everywhere. If I had a heart like this, I'd carry one, then I'd also have an AC>DC converter so I could be plugged in the wall directly.

    THEN I'd have a solar charger in the car, AND a charging recepticle in the dash.
  • "had the impression (uh, no quotes, sorry) that one of the primary problems was not simply pumping blood, but pumping the right amount of blood.

    >A natural heart adjusts depending on the needs of the body - for an artificial heart, is this a big issue? Does anyone know how it is addressed, in general, and in this specific case?"

    One of several approaches to this is to use a pneumatic "volume compensation device to allow some variability in the area behind the pump for filling. The body has a series of checks and balances, but for flow regulation it's mostly based on venous return: The arteries can constrict causing the blood pressure to rise in regional or overall (systemic) fashion, but there is precious little that will cause the veins to constrict. While unanticipated venous dilation would cause problems, generally, if the physiology is, overall, intact, this will _not_ happen.

    So, what I'm suggesting here is that the flow could well be regulated in several ways. I will have to do some research on the Abiomed device in its current state, but the pump could well have a central aortic pressure sensor and attempt to pump more blood (ie., faster) to maintain a mean pressure; the pump could be triggered to "fire" when a certain fill point in the ventricular chambers is reached, or the pump could be set to a fixed rate and simply pump the available blood at the time it's supposed to pump, little or lots, depending on venous return.

    Having been out of the game for a while I'm not sure anymore which of the methods is prevalent, but the first 2, in isolation or combination are physiologically attractive.
  • Transdermal induction-based power supplies were first successfully introduced about 1985; before that they were bigger, bulkier, damaged the skin, had poor efficiency, and were just plain painful. Still, the amount of power transferrable across the intact skin, without damaging same, isn't likely to be enough to provide much juice for a continuously operating motor. Even at low power settings, the continuous portion of that equation is a battery-draining issue.

    Further, batteries have to be non-venting and encased in a bio-neutral container. Last time I looked, that pretty well limited them to nickle-cadmium cells, or sealed, depleted electrolyte lead-acid cells. The lead-acid cells are too heavy for these purposes. The number of NiCd's one can package in an unobtrusive manner, and manage to parallel in a fashion that will provide good current-density, is still small. Further, despite advances in NiCd chemistry, there are still issues with "memory" (dendritic formation within the cells) and cycle life. I anticipate more battery work will ensue, especially if the physiology of this device in humans is borne out (most of the testing has been in calves; the issues of cell morphology and fragility are not identical!), then a device like this will spur significant research in associated fields... because the money AND the good will are there.

  • Re:"this is bigger news than it sounds..." (Score:5)

    by GPSguy ( 62002 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:50AM (#111411)
    I spent a number of years in the articifial heart field while at Texas Heart Institute. It really *IS* big news.

    All the artificial heart implants in humans have been tethered implants. The patient has had to be tied to a console or power source, electrical or air, with no more than brief respites of untethered activity. The devices have been harsh on quality of life, and a whole host of physiologic functions. They have not allowed normal interaction with other humans, and those few patients who've ventured outside the walls of the hospital were making brief visits away, not returning to the world.

    The Abiomed pump is small enough to reasonably be implanted, and reliable enough to expect it to work well. The centers selected for the initial implants have sufficient experience with animal implantation, AND various human procedures of a more mundane variety, to expect them to be able to manage the patients well, indeed.

    We're about 9 years behind where I thought we'd get to with a really viable, implantable heart, mainly because of the costs necessary to support this sort of research. It's long overdue.

    I suspect that the 125,000 potential patients Abiomed cited in the article may be an understatement. Doesn't matter. If this allows some patients who were dying waiting for a transplant...or who were deemed not good candidates for the scarce resource of a donated heart... a shot at a good quality life and a time extension, this is WONDERFUL news.

    Makes me wish I'd stayed in the game.

  • .. (Score:1)

    by vbrtrmn ( 62760 )
    I wonder if _they_ could create some kind of charging mechinism from the patient's movements like walking or doing somekind of low impact exersise.

    --
    microsoft, it's what's for dinner

    bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
  • With news reports which claim that Sony's PS2 threatens the Department of Defense [digitimes.com], I'm glad there's no way someone could say h4x0rs were to blame for a buffer overflow which caused Dick Cheney to have a heart attack or something
  • It's not like the planet gives a rats ass anyways... The worst possible result of mans existance is that we annihilate ourselves and every other living thing on this rock, but I don't believe that even the simultaneous detonation of all of the nuclear weapons on earth would destroy the rock beyond the point that the matter would recoalesce and sometime before the sun burnt out new intelligent life would be here. So don't worry, the earth isn't in danger, WE ARE...

    Kintanon
  • Newsweek had an interesting article about the replacement heart and the company that makes it in the June 25th issue. Here [msnbc.com] is a link to the online article.
  • Actually, the pump can change due to activity. As the requirements for increased blood flow increase, the pump increases its rate. In a Newsweek article [msnbc.com] about the pump, they said "... though it lacks the pumping capacity a basketball player would need, it will adjust its own output as needed to accommodate low-key hiking or gardening or sex."

    I don't know about the sterile argument. It makes sense, but many people have insulin pumps that are hooked up to a tube that enters the body.

  • From a newsweek article that describes the device, it appeared that the patient wears a battery belt that has one or more camcorder sized batteryies. This apparently was a big step since the previous artificial hearts required huge battery carts. I seem to recall that there was an internal battery so that the external batteries could be replaced easily and for emergency backup.
  • Patients getting it aren't expected to live more than a few months, let alone years -- after all, initial trials will be conducted in those with 30 days or less expected (w/o AbioCor; they hope to double that for now).

    There's an internal battery backup, 'tho, to serve when the external battery (power transmitted via induction coil) is replaced. There's an audible alarm, IIRC, that should sound when power is low. And ISTR that once a patient lasts a few years on it, the heart itself is meant to be replaced periodically.
  • At least according to this article [sfgate.com] in the San Francisco Chronicle.

    From 30 to 60 days. Well, maybe some exponential law will apply to this...

    Andrew.
  • Nuclear batteries work this way, I think: a small amount of some radioactive substance is placed in a container. The substance slowly decays, giving off neutrons or gamma rays or whatnot. These decay by products are absorbed by the encasing material, which turns the heat into electricity (nature of the substance..that's all I know, i'm not a materials guy ;)). They usually generate quite a few milliwatts. Of course, the amount of electricity they generate is exponentially decaying, but you can get a good balance of half life and power output to last quite a while.
  • they use people as batteries, he says "combined with a form of fusion...."....fusion would provide much more energy than the excess gleaned from humans

    Why bother with humans in the first place then?

    ----------------------------

  • Batteries (Score:3)

    by NTSwerver ( 92128 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:37AM (#111422) Journal
    As we get closer to creating more artificial body parts, the issues of batteries, much like powering laptops for longer times become more critical and the solutions become more intrinsically interesting.

    Well if the robots in The Matrix can power all of their hardware using humans as batteries, can't we harnace enough of that potential energy in one human to power his/her own artificial heart?

    ----------------------------
  • Abiomed wants to observe a ''quiet period'' with no media comment so the patient can recover with his or her family in private, and so the surgical team can devote all its energy to the operation and patient care, Ed Berger, an Abiomed spokesman, has said over the past several months.

    Stressing again that he was not confirming or denying that the implant had taken place, Berger said yesterday that Abiomed and the surgical team had agreed to comment only when they were sure they could ''meet the demands of the press without compromising patient care.''

    I think that is very noble of the doctors. It's nice to see concerns for the patient come before publicity for the company. It's too bad we don't see this more often, I was getting tired of hearing Dick Cheney's doctors discussing his heart on national television.

  • If our own biological heart uses electricial energy to pump, why can't an artifical pump use that same signal?

    Our biological hearts do not use electrical energy to pump. They get energy by oxidizing glucose they get from the blood, the same way the rest of the body does (the blood also carries the oxygen). That's why you have to breath, to get oxygen. (Technically, cells can and do generate small amounts of energy without oxygen, but if your heart has to resort to that, you're pretty much dead.) The nerve signals are just that: signals. The amount of energy they carry is miniscule.

  • It does sound good, but the frequent plugging in does sound a little scary.

    You want scary? Try waking up from surgery to find that your heart has been replaced with a baked potatoe? This is my theory, anyway. They use the potatoe to power the pump (no external lines) similar to those potatoe clocks of Mr. Wizzardry...
  • Can anyone set me straight on something - does this require an external power source or does it draw power from the patient? As far as I can tell from the article, the coil beneath the skin is used for induction, so you wouldn't need to plug the patient in, but you still need to use an external power source to induce a supply current for the artificial heart. Surely this would still require a fairly portable power source (like a battery), since the internal battery only lasts 30 mins.

    However, Hemos seems to think that it draws it's power from the skin itself, not from a supply through the skin. I guess the article is a little unclear. But does anyone have any less ambiguous info on this?

  • The patients aren't so sick they can't undergo surgery, but they are going to die soon regardless of whether they get a new heart or not. Doctors have to make the difficult judgement on who gets a new heart based on who's going to benefit the most from it; if there's 2 guys with a year left, 1 heart, and it'll extend one life by 10 years and the other by 6 months, then the six month guy is going to lose out.

    OK, so that's a gross simplification, but you get the idea. These patients are up for this surgery because otherwise they'd be ruled out, and they're understandably willing to take the risk.

  • IANADr (despite the nick), but I don't think the insulin pumps are anywhere near as invasive - the insulin just needs to be introduced to your bloodstream (IIRC my GCSE Biology lessons), but until now artificial hearts have required a wire from outside your skin direct to your heart. Your blood stream is pretty good at fighting infection, but give the nasties a direct highway to your heart and I guess things would be more complicated.

  • Clients... (Score:3)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @05:38AM (#111429) Journal
    The reference to code morphing got me thinking.

    "Hey Dave, hear you got a new heart. How's it feel?"

    "Well I'm pretty tired, but that's probably because I'm using spare battery cycls to run SETI@Home."

  • NPR (Score:3)

    by Trinition ( 114758 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:39AM (#111430) Homepage
    I remember hearing about this last week on NPR. They said that Abiomed had stated it would take place, but not when -- just within the next week (from the time the story aired).

    So they were being vage about it before it happened and are being vague after it happened. Whyy all of the secrecy?

  • The left wing wackos now say that Bush isn't the president and Cheney really is. Before this, the right-wing wackos said that Hillary was in charge and Bill wasn't. This is the essence of American democracy.
  • I don't know why all the confusion, but CNBC is reporting that the surgery definitely happened. They didn't mention a source for their info.

  • Well, they have two facts.

    1. They knew this was doing to happen in the next couple of weeks, as the company already said as much.
    2. A source inside the hospital (presumably one they trust) says the operation has been performed.
    3. The spokes person for the hospital and compnay was evasive enough ( ie refuseing to confirm or deny) that it seems likely he was indicating that it happened, they just don't want to talk about it yet.

    Based on these facts, it seems logical to assumethat the operatio DID take place, but nobody want to give out details yet (understandably).

  • As another poster points out, I believe this battery pack is smaller, but more importantly, there is no direct "hole in the skin" connection between the battery and te heart. Without a hole, infection has a MUCH lower chance of setting in. taht is waht makes this thig so revolutionary. It's still a bit of a pain, but it's a pain that can be used outside a sterile environment. The guy can go home, go to the mall, play with the kids, whatever. He probably can't strain much (I doubt the pump can respond to increases or decreases in activity), but he can live a semi normal life. Previous attempts, because of the wires passing through the skin into your innards, left the patient confined to to a sterile environment (which, sterile environments being somewhat imperfect under most circumstances would still eventually allow them to die of an infection.)

  • So, now we're going to see laptop-battery-powered hearts. Probably only a matter of time before they're implanted inside of patients themselves. My only concern is this: What happens when those lithium-ion batteries EXPLODE? Better make sure to keep Dell and Apple away from this one...
  • Or... Install a tesla coil in your home! That way, you at least don't need to recharge while you're at home!

    For those who are wondering what this is all about: http://www.hightension.org/frameset.htm?wireless.h tm [hightension.org] and http://www.pbs.org/tesla/res/res_art08.html [pbs.org].


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • [On growing humans as energy in The Matrix]

    Why bother with humans in the first place then?

    Because racks and racks of brainless tissue wouldn't make a very entertaining movie.
  • Wow the slashdot editors do actually read posts and fix their spelling errors.
  • The heart implanted yesterday has a tiny electric motor in it. An implanted battery that powers the motor is kept charged by a system that uses no wires or tubes. Instead, the battery, which can last about 30 minutes without a recharge, gets its power renewed from a coil that transfers energy through the skin.

    I get annoyed when the battery in my laptop only lasts 2.5 hours. Can you image the stress of never being more the 30 minutes of battery life from dying? Hopefully there is some sort of notice before the battery actually runs out: "Warning, life support will fail in 5 minutes."

  • a while back, on dateline NBC or something like that. They had a whole special about artificial hearts and how far they have come. They talked for about a half hour about a guy who recieved a temporary heart which was a very primitive mechanical heart, complete with an external battery and an alarm to alert the patient when the battery got low. For when the battery failed, there was a hand pump bulb for keeping minimal circulation until a fresh battery could be discovered. After that section, they talked about new research on artificial hearts and all of the obsticles which they had to overcome to get them to work well, including the external power supply connection. Which, ended up being a set of coils under the skin which recieve current from a set of coils above the skin. EMF is fun for heart patients. These are very simple devices, I am going to look for a link or more information about the plastic bag hearts.
  • Coumadin is both a boon and a bane. I know -- I have an aortic mechanical heart valve. But considering a pig's valve plus the anti-rejection pills and how easy it is to screw yourself over with this, the Coumadin's over-instability is a better choice.

    The problem with Coumadin is simple: It's the only thing out there that works, but is grossly unstable. The pill is frustrating to be on, as one day you don't show bruising, and the next day you're a hemophilliac! With that in mind, your doctor's visits are longer when you have to get another pill because you need an army of pharmacists to pick out a pill that won't intefere (rare) with coumadin. Even caffeine can react with Coumadin, and alchohol is a blood thinner, too; so much for having more than 2 drinks.

    Otherwise it's kinda cool being able to have a 22mm valve in ya... but most of the time you don't even notice it.

  • Wow, am I the first one to make a Piccard artificial heart reference? Sheesh, on Slashdot I expected better. ;P

    Q: Congratulations Jean Luc, you're dead!

    Magius_AR

    P.S. That was the same episode Piccard got lucky ;P (good episode)

  • we produce 40W of excess heat. This fact makes cuddling up next to someone a very pleasent ordeal

    So it must be extra pleasent when they fart...
  • That would be one hell of an exploit though!

    Jaysyn
  • Actually, when Morpheus explains that they use people as batteries, he says "combined with a form of fusion, they had all the energy they needed." Now IANANP, but I think that fusion would provide much more energy than the excess gleaned from humans.

  • Maybe if you'd talked to The Biomed Inc. instead of just A Biomed Inc. you would have been able to confirm that the surgery actually took place!

    ...I'm sorry. I appologize for that horrible joke. Feel free to mod this down to -2... That is a cool achievement though; it brings us one more step closer to useful implanted information devices.

  • An insulin pump is just a portable IV system, the same as you'd get in any hospital for relatively routine procedures. In total, it reaches no more than 1 inch into the skin, and is replaced anyway, once or twice a week. The power supply is housed in the device, externally.

    The power supply for a device like this would have to (before now) be supplied via a power cable that went directly to the heart. That goes far deeper than an insulin pump, and does have direct access to the center of the circulatory system, meaning any infection could get just about anywhere.

  • The Newsweek article on this last week suggested that its only the internal backup battery that has the 30 minute life. The external batteries, which the device would presumably obtain the majority of its power, lasts two hours.

    It also then tells the story of a former recipient (presumably of the older, more invasive type) who accidently placed half-used batteries into his power supply before going to the dentist and had to rush home halfway through a root canal, worried that he'd get held up in traffic and his heart would stop. Why on earth you wouldn't bring a spare set with you, I don't know....

  • How long will the old man have to hold on before he can get ahold of one of these babies? A bionic heart sounds like just the thing for America's favorite bacon lover.

    Dick Cheney Sees Wizard, Recieves Heart [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Would you really want a beta test model? (Score:4)

    by tenzig_112 ( 213387 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @04:14AM (#111450) Homepage
    I won't even install a 1.0 video card for fear that my computer will explode. Can you imagine what the beta testers notes would look like?

    On several occasions, when I use a cell phone on my left side, I black out. This is unfortunate as I tend to use my phone when I can't get to a land line- i.e. when I'm driving. Have someone look into that.

    So, it's not for me. However, Dick Cheney coud use one of these. [ridiculopathy.com]

  • You sound as if you know a lot more about this than I do, so I feel a bit weird replying, but what the heck.

    My understanding is that the scoring that determines whether or not a patient is a good candidate for a transplant rates higher for those who have a better chance for long term survivability. It's not exactly how sick they are right now, but a number of factors making them "too sick".

    A patient may well be "too sick" to undergo a heart transplant based upon normal scoring methods that take into account others who may also need the organ. But no such restrictions exist when talking about life vs. death and an artificial heart.

    Sean.

  • It's not like this radioactive material is undergoing fission or fusion and creating all sorts of nasty stuff - it's decaying normally, the same as it would if it were still in the ground. And it's probably not enough to harm anyone anyway.
  • I know I probably shouldn't reply to this troll, but look at it this way: would you rather have be able to live and have some small increased risk of cancer (if it's even true), or just DIE because your heart has stopped working?

    I know I'd pick the artificial heart any day. But maybe you just like dying. Some people are that way, I guess. :)
  • "Well if the robots in The Matrix can power all of their hardware using humans as batteries, can't we harnace enough of that potential energy in one human to power his/her own artificial heart?

    A absurd as this sounds, its probabally true that we could use our own bodys as an energy source and in the future will. If our own biological heart uses electricial energy to pump, why can't an artifical pump use that same signal?

  • Anonymous, indeed (Score:3)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @03:42AM (#111455) Homepage
    From the article:

    The heart implanted yesterday has a tiny electric motor in it. An implanted battery that powers the motor is kept charged by a system that uses no wires or tubes. Instead, the battery, which can last about 30 minutes without a recharge, gets its power renewed from a coil that transfers energy through the skin.

    If it works as hoped, the AbioCor could keep people alive, alert and mobile for years. They would wear battery packs or plug into an electrical outlet to keep their hearts going.

    ...so basically, if Cheney's Secret Service guys start lugging a bunch of car batteries and extension cords around, we'll have a pretty good idea of who this "unknown" recipient is.

    ...though I suspect that it would take more than just an artificial heart to make Cheney seem alive and alert...

  • **view of man jumping out of 5 story hospital window, in slow motion, and the sound of...

    *chin*chin*chin*chin*chin*
  • Being a doc, I'm sure you could have gone into the actual electrophysiology of cardiac myocyte contraction and oxidative phosphorylation but decided not to bore everyone here silly.

    More interestingly though, and TOTALLY offtopic, for all you non scientists out there - our mitochondria (the 'cellular powerhouses') use a pH gradient across their inner membranes to physically turn the F1-F0 ATPase to regenerate ATP (the chemical source of cellular energy) from ADP and AMP....so they essentially act as a battery (H+ gradient) to turn electrical energy (electrons extracted via oxidative phosphorylation cascade) into chemical energy that can be used by our cells.

    This is probably the process they were thinking of when they wrote the matrix (really? you reckon?).

    Interesting, but offtopic.
    -Nano.
  • I agree with your second one.
    I know soemone who has a plastic heart. They take blood thinners and definitely move slower.

    Ideally I'd take the real thing if I could, but in such a situation, I'd just take what I could get :)
  • Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! I can get fatter than my wildest dreams!
  • better yet, what if that motor dies!

    if this motor is made by lets say, Kenwood, like my cd-rom drive, the thing would die in under a year.

    .kb
  • yeah for real...maybe they should've gotten APC on this project...after 25 minutes, does the thing beep for you to plug your ass in the wall?

    .kb
  • One of the big problems with artificial hearts is preventing damage to the blood cells the the pump inflicts on them. The rate of destroying blood cells has to be less that the body's ability to replace them. Mechanical pumps are brutal on blood cells.
  • Artificial hearts and ED-209 on the same day next to each other. What's next? Detroit constructing "Metro City" and all the police going on strike? :)

  • So now we can give people 100% fully independent artificial heart transplants, isn't it time we moved on to brains, courage and a portable instantaneous matter transportation device (aka magic red shoes) that will take you anywhere you want to go?

    Buckle up Dorothy, cos Kansas is going bye-bye...

  • The coil is some kind of induction coil under your skin that you stick an outside "inducer" onto which has wires to a battery you wear or carry around.

    There's some kind of backup battery inside your body that lasts like 10-15 minutes and beeps if you remove the inducer.

    The heart has been tested in a lab to beat for the equivalent of something like 35 years but don't forget your battery!

  • 1) "as an experiment on terminally ill heart patients who aren't candidates for transplants because they are so sick." Um, if they are too sick to go through regular heart surgery why wouldn't they be too sick for this. Its not like OKT3 and cyclosporin and coumadin are easy on the body either.

    2)I suppose i'd rather take coumadin the rest of my life (blood thinner to prevent thrombus formation on the valves in the artificial heart) than cyclosporing / OKT3 (anti rejection drugs). But your exercise tolerance and managability defintely wouldn't be as good as the transplanted heart because it wouldn't be able to respond to inotropes/beta blockers/ace inhibitors/calcium channel blockers.

  • Re:Worrying... (Score:3)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Tuesday July 03, 2001 @04:54AM (#111467)
    How do they ensure a reliable power supply (i.e. uptime...) over some years?

    They make the patient sign a contract that forbids them from travelling to California.

  • The need for external connections to a power supply was only one impediment to the development of an artificial heart. The other important one was that, for some reason, plastic tends to promote the formation of blood clots, so before long the patient would die of a stroke.
  • Is it just me or is the name of the company Abiomed suspiciously close to Aibo... aaahhh! Its a Sony plot to change us all into bionic worker robots!
  • I had the impression (uh, no quotes, sorry) that one of the primary problems was not simply pumping blood, but pumping the right amount of blood. A natural heart adjusts depending on the needs of the body - for an artificial heart, is this a big issue? Does anyone know how it is addressed, in general, and in this specific case?
  • "Gentleman, we can rebuild him/her. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first Bionic man/woman. Unnamed Source will be that man. Better than he/she was before. Better . . . stronger . . . faster."

    Sorry, couldn't resisit. :)
    ---

  • The implant was confirmed by a source close to the process, who declined to be identified.

    The article is full of stuff like this.

    What I want to know is ... did they do it, or not?

  • Surely you must have realized that the movie in question was a work of fiction. That said, humans aren't exactly efficient as an energy source. Bioelectricity is very difficult to harness at this moment. One of the easiest ways of harnessin humans as an energy source is heat: we produce 40W of excess heat. This fact makes cuddling up next to someone a very pleasent ordeal :)
  • In theory, we could. Unfortunately, we would have to find away to get the electrons from sugars and other molecules that exist in the body at a high enough voltage and amphere to be able to power the heart. Years of technology in bio-mechanics ahead of us for us to be able to do that. Maybe when I'm 50?
    ----
  • Didnt the Matrix show that humans could be batteries?
  • They don't give hearts to those who are less likely to survive. But more importantly, in this case the patient is summer from severe kidney failre as well as long term heart failure. A heart transplant wouldn't be very viable at the currentr time, but if they can prolong his life long enough for the fluid to clear the lungs (done already) and the kidney failure to stabilize he may become more able to recieve a transplant. --
  • If they don't deny, it's true!
  • Wonder how many seconds of sex the batteries can take... And it also would be pretty bad if during the act you "uh oh... hold that position.. I just got to change my batteries" ..
    Coming to think of the Duracell bunny, but that is anothre story...
  • It only has a 30min battery.. this would suck that means they would have to recharge 48 times a day. and what would they do if the heart happened to stop working? i think the person would be royally fucked. While i realise they are only testing it on people who have very little time left here, it culd either be lengthend or shortened by this device. I'm all for the exploration into finding alternative to relying on transplants but having to recharge every 30mins wont allow them to lead a normal life.

    Does the heart come with a car charger?


    ------------
  • Difference is, when it was taken out of the ground, it was U-238, with a halflife of about 4.5 billion years but when it's disposed of, it's Pu-239, with a halflife of 25000 years. Pu-239 is far more radioactive, and also toxic. Nasty stuff, not at all like the relatively harmless U-238.

    Also, it is taken out from deep underground, where it's radiation is absorbed by rocks and never reaches the surface (yes, there are surface rocks that contain uranium, but they aren't mined). If the plutonium in the pacemakers gets incinerated and introduced into the atmosphere, it's far more dangerous than it would be underground.

    Still, if it's disposed of properly (used as fuel in reactors, or buried deep underground), then it's really not a problem.

    Makes you wonder if lithium batteries with coils for inductive charging would be a neater solution though... in a pacemaker, they would last for ages (when was the last time that CMOS battery needed replacing?) and they could be charged infrequently by placing a current-inducing coil on your chest.
  • Nuclear pacemakers aren't powered by a fuel rod, but a tiny pellet of radioactive material. That link talks about Pu-238 being used, maybe that's a error or maybe it's a very unusual isotope of plutonium (the normal isotope is Pu-239). In the case of Pu-239, the half-life is about 25000 years... considerably longer than the life of the human it's sustaining. When plutonium decays, it gives out heat, and this heat is used to power the pacemaker. Probably using the Thompson effect.

    Unfortunately, this technology will never work for artificial hearts, which require far more power than a pacemaker power source can supply.

    Personally, I think instead of using alien (to the human body) power sources, like batteries, plutonium pellets, etc, they'd be better off using fuel cells. Fuel cells can metabolise substances in the bloodstream, just like the human heart does. Think of it this way: the heart is pumping huge amounts of blood, all packed full of sugar and oxygen; why not use that power supply instead of ignoring it for some artificial alternative?
  • Great, now someone is going to go patent the battery that can power both your laptop and your heart. You need to stop giving ideas to these people!

    By the way, why can't you have code morphing for human hearts?
    ---
  • No, the baterry is recharged by electromagnetic induction, THROUGH the skin, like many present day pacemakers. This avoids surgery every time the battery needs to be replaced, or having the battery OUTSIDE the skin which leaves an entry point for all sorts of infections since at some point the wire would have to cross through the skin. A coil is placed under the skin, and a strong magnet is used to induce a current in this coil when you want to recharge the battery.

    Of course I was always one to favour nuclear isotope powered batteries...

    "Umm, Mr. Smith, the reason we brought you to this island in the Pacific all alone is because there's a problem with your battery... No no don't worry... the lead and concrete are for our... uhh... your protection"

  • The really interesting bit, of course, is that this heart is governed by a microchip running a ROM version of Win98. Every time the OS crashes, this signals the device to generate a new beat...

    The manufacturer claims that this heart is capable of generating heartbeats on the order of 60 to 140 beats per minute, which is well within the range for sustaining life...

  • This is an interesting question. Being a doc, I feel qualified to answer it :)

    The heart relies on its own internal "pacemakers", which generate the electrical signals that cause it to beat. If you take someone's heart out of their body and put it in the biopsy jar, it's hard to think how you could harness this signal (unless of course your career as a cardiologist comes to an untimely end because all of your patients also wind up in specimen jars in the Pathology lab).

    The heart is completely automatic, and self contained. The few nerve endings that DO go to the heart are part of the autonomous nervous system, and they can do things like "speed it up" or "slow it down", or change the size of blood vessels in and around the heart. A final function is to provide the sensation of pain, which is felt by many (but not all) people when they suffer an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) or angina. But the actual "beating" part is a built in thing.

    There ARE circumstances that DO permit the use of the heart's own current, an example is an AV block. In this case, disease causes an obstruction to the path of the electrical signal, preventing it from reaching the ventricles. Certain types of pacemaker can be plugged into the SA node (the part where electrical signals in the heart originate). They detect the change in potential that signals a beat, and tell a battery powered microchip to send an electrical current directly to the ventricles, causing them to beat as well. So this device essentially re-wires the heart, providing an alternate and artificial path for the electrical signal.

    But an artificial device cannot use the signal, since you've taken the signal-generating mechanism out :)

    As an interesting side note, the fact that the heart is completely automatic has caused a lot of problems in legal medicine, one of which being the fact that a person can be completely dead and yet their heart can still be beating. This is where "neurological" and "brain" death comes in. Still we view the heart in an almost romantic sense, and most people associate a pulse with "life", and lack of a pulse with "death". It is perfectly possible to have a neurologically dead person hooked up to life support machinery and have their heart go on beating for years or even decades. But if the brain is gone, that person is never coming back, and is (in most countries) legally dead. There are also very few people who are alive and perfectly healthy, and yet have no tangible pulse. This is called "Takayasu's disease", and I personally met one of these patients. The fun part was when my tutor asked me to get her pulse, hoping I would lie and say "72" or so :)

    "ex corporis, scientia; ex scientia, aris"

  • I dunno, I'd be very afraid of having the power run out at the wrong time...
  • Woo hoo! Everyone party tonight! All we need now is that little idiot in office to fund stem cell research, and we'll be redifining humanity. Asimov would be proud.

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