Self-Contained Artificial Heart Is Pumping Away

vladkrupin writes: "This MSNBC article reads: "The man with the world's first self-contained artificial heart is recovering ahead of expectations, his surgeon said Wednesday, a month after the titanium and plastic pump was implanted..." This is a follow-up on this and this stories posted here just a short while ago."

Re:is this the right diet?

[meldroc]

I doubt he has to worry about clogged coronary arteries, he doesn't have coronary arteries anymore. This is a major advance - since the heart is self-contained - no tubes coming through the skin to a big pump machine, only a battery pack that induces electricity through the skin, the chance of infection is greatly reduced.

Anyone care to...

[SIGFPE]

...correct the title or is the science department not worthy of proof-reading.
--

I'm really not a luddite....

[BigTimOBrien]

I guess the robot heart is a great thing for people who would otherwise die without it. Go robot heart!

Assume we were giving sufferers of Lung cancer a robot lung. You know the mainstream media would follow a story like that with another story detailing the numerous evils of smoking. How come CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, all other corporate news, never follow a story about the artificial heart with a discussion about how you can avoid ever having to experience an artificial heart. Is it because they know that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, would stop buying expensive advertising time.

Not trying to stomp out every fire of excitment, just trying to provide some balance here. We should be worried that we have so many people with heart disease. The goal is to live in such a way that only the rarest cases would ever need an artificial anything?

Am I right? or am I full of bogus and smelly cheese?

Re:Anyone care to...

[Dancin_Santa]

I'm of the opinion that should just be left alone.

Dancin Santa

is this the right diet?

[NaturePhotog]

...celebrated 30 days of survival on the AbioCor artificial heart by eating ice cream and cheesecake A heart patient eating ice cream and cheesecake? His kidney and liver functions are stable and his lungs are clear, the doctor said. Or at least they were... Still, it's pretty cool this thing seems to be working so well. He sounds like a much happier camper than Barney Clark [webmd.com] was on the Jarvik 7.

DOH! *slaps wallet*

[cybermace5]

I had an inside on this...shoulda bought stock six months ago when these people came to my school [rose-hulman.edu] and did a presentation on their new heart. I was just there to run the video equipment, these guys didn't know they needed some additional equipment to run a video, so I stayed around to run the videos and stuff.

One of the most interesting things about it was how the power is supplied. There is an inductive paddle inside which transfers power to the internal lithium-ion battery from the belt battery pack. They said you could take the battery belt off and the heart would run for about 2.5 hours on internal power. At this point a lot of people began snickering, because this is a laptop school and people were drawing parallels. In any case, I got to handle a few interesting parts.

Actually, the stock hasn't jumped incredibly yet, so it might still be a good idea to grab some shares....

Just a heartbeat away...

[Paintthemoon]

And from watching Cheney, you'd never know he even had the operation...;)