Heart Pumps

A 62-year-old man whose body was rejecting a transplanted heart recently became the first person implanted with an experimental heart pump the size of a pencil eraser. The Hemopump cardiac assist device saved the patient's life by keeping his heart beating while doctors used powerful drugs to stop his body from rejecting the transplanted organ. Once the device receives federal approval for widespread use, it potentially could save the lives of 150,000 people each year, Hemopump inventor Dr.

Racing fans swarmed around the paddock at Hollywood Park on Saturday showing off Zenyatta posters, paintings, buttons, hats and T-shirts in support of the unbeaten 6-year-old mare who was chasing perfection in her final racing appearance in Southern California. And like the entertainer she has become, Zenyatta created suspense and intrigue. At the eighth pole, Zenyatta was in third place, three lengths behind the leader Switch, a 3-year-old filly who looked on the verge of conquering the queen of thoroughbred racing.

A 67-year-old man has survived more than six years on an artificial heart pump, a sign that the devices might be an alternative to organ transplants. The ventricular assist device pumps blood through the bodies of people whose heart chambers no longer work well, doctors said Thursday in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. "Right now, we can implant the pump only in people who are about to die," said letter coauthor Dr. O.H.

Mechanical pumps originally designed to supplement the pumping action of a failing heart and keep the patient alive until a transplant could be found have taken a major step toward becoming a permanent treatment -- a development that could expand their use to tens of thousands of patients in the United States alone. Results presented Tuesday at the Orlando, Fla., meeting of the American Heart Assn. showed that a new type of device more than doubled the two-year survival rate among heart failure patients.

Proposed Medicare rules could boost reimbursement for Thoratec Corp.'s heart pumps used on a permanent basis by end-stage heart-failure patients as much as 30%, the firm said Tuesday, sending its shares sharply higher. Thoratec said the proposed rules would put reimbursement for the company's heart pumps at about $125,000 per procedure, compared with about $96,000 now, when used as a permanent treatment. The Pleasanton, Calif.

Doctors Tuesday night transplanted a heart into a teen-ager and removed a pair of temporary plastic heart pumps that had kept him alive for five days, officials said. Michael C. Jones, 16, who has been near death since an unidentified virus attacked his heart, had been attached to ventricular assist devices since Thursday to pump his blood. Doctors at Jewish Hospital have said his chances of surviving are 20%, even with the new heart. The transplant surgery, which began at 8:45 p.m.

UCI Medical Center has been granted permission to use a new type of temporary artificial heart, a plastic pump that would fit outside a heart patient's body, hospital officials said Friday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved use of the Acute Ventricular Assist Device (AVAD) at the hospital.

A 52-year-old man who was the first recipient of a portable heart pump designed to keep patients alive and mobile while they await donated hearts died two weeks after the operation, the hospital announced Saturday. Larry Heinsohn died Thursday of multiple organ failure, including his liver and kidneys, Texas Heart Institute spokesman Marc Mattsson said. His death was unrelated to the battery-operated device, Mattsson said.

The dying heart cells of many people with heart failure can be brought back to life with the help of a mechanical pump that temporarily takes over their function--a finding that could dramatically alter the future treatment of the nearly 5 million Americans with congestive heart failure. Cardiologists have always assumed that, once damaged, heart tissues could never recover. But a new report in today's Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Assn.

Miniature heart pumps, which until now have been viewed only as temporary bridge devices until a transplant becomes available, are an effective treatment on their own and could save some 27,000 lives annually, researchers said Monday. Each year, about 100,000 Americans reach end-stage heart failure, where death is imminent. But only about 2,100 donor hearts become available.

Peer Portner, 68, the inventor of an implanted electrical pump for heart-failure patients, died of cancer Feb. 9 at his home in the San Francisco Bay area, according to an announcement from Stanford University. Originally trained as a nuclear physicist, Portner became a consulting professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. He began working with doctors at the school in the early 1970s to develop his pump, called the left ventricular assist device.

A cynic might take one look at the laid-back design of a stationary recumbent bike and say, "Only Americans could think up a way to get their exercise in a recliner." But despite costing $200 to $300 more, recumbents outsell their upright counterparts today because they provide a real service: more comfort for your back, safety and ease of use for all ages, loads of user-friendly electronics and the same killer workout as an upright -- albeit with more emphasis on the glutes.

A device that helps severely damaged hearts pump may be able to do what was once thought impossible -- reverse heart failure in people who are weeks from death. The left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, can boost the heart's ability to function, allowing it to recover if used with the right drugs, British researchers have found. The team used the device and a combination of heart drugs in 15 patients who had severe heart failure.

A 67-year-old man has survived more than six years on an artificial heart pump, a sign that the devices might be an alternative to organ transplants. The ventricular assist device pumps blood through the bodies of people whose heart chambers no longer work well, doctors said Thursday in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. "Right now, we can implant the pump only in people who are about to die," said letter coauthor Dr. O.H.

When I was a kid, I'd pull on a black leotard and pink tights and make the best sound ever: the shuffle-shuffle-shuffle of my tap shoes on our tiled kitchen floor. Step-ball-changing to "The Muppet Show" theme seemed so Broadway, so grown-up -- at age 5. Then came adolescence, and tap-dancing felt anything but adult. Recently I journeyed to Long Beach to see if I could reawaken a childhood interest that, a decade earlier, had me stomping to a song from "Sister Act" in a green-sequined dress.

"It's better than a video game! It's better than a movie!" Ben Guzman's eyes widen. Sure they do. He stands a half-inch taller just thinking about Southern California's most daring thrill ride -- propelling a spindly, stripped-down bicycle straight into the fury of big city traffic. Guzman's friend ponders the remark, and shakes his head. "No," says Jimmy Lizama, flashing a ferocious grin. "It is the movie." Traffic got you down?

For decades, heart surgeons have experimented with, and fantasized about, man-made devices that can replace the workings of the human heart. Recently, in a Houston hospital, a new type of artificial heart pump was used on a human patient for the first time. Radically different from other heart substitutes, the new pump is about the size of a pencil eraser and does not require opening of the chest to be inserted.

Approval Recommended for Heart Device: A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel made the recommendation for the Thoratec Laboratories Corp. product, which beats for a failing heart while the patient awaits a transplant. The device takes over all or part of a failed heart's function for patients who might otherwise die while waiting for a donor heart.

Who among us hasn't seen a James Bond film, watched an episode of "Alias" or read a Robert Ludlum novel and not imagined effortlessly whomping the bad guy before making a quick escape by rappelling down the side of a building? Yet even as we entertained such thoughts, we realized that we probably wouldn't have to run from a fireball in the course of a day.

Proposed Medicare rules could boost reimbursement for Thoratec Corp.'s heart pumps used on a permanent basis by end-stage heart-failure patients as much as 30%, the firm said Tuesday, sending its shares sharply higher. Thoratec said the proposed rules would put reimbursement for the company's heart pumps at about $125,000 per procedure, compared with about $96,000 now, when used as a permanent treatment. The Pleasanton, Calif.