(Circulation. 2001;104:e9033.)
© 2001 American Heart Association, Inc.
Third AbioCor Artificial Heart Implanted in Houston
Circulation Newswriter
A third patient has received the AbioCor total artificial heart, which is made by the Massachusetts-based corporation Abiomed, this time at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. In this instance, the patient, who was hospitalized at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, was in the last stages of heart failure, unable to walk, and barely able to speak. Like the first 2 patients, he was not considered a candidate for a heart transplantation. Like the other patients, he received the implant as a permanent replacement for his natural heart.
Two days after the surgery, which was performed September 26, 2001, the man was reported to be breathing on his own, and the heart seemed to have relieved the pulmonary hypertension caused by the chronic heart failure. During a press conference at the institute, O.H. Frazier, MD, the surgeon who implanted the device, said, "This technology seems to work very well, but we have to go patient by patient." Dr Frazier spent more than a decade helping to develop the implant in the research laboratories of the Texas Heart Institute. However, he was delayed in implanting the artificial device in the required number of animals by the devastation wreaked by Tropical Storm Allison in the Texas Medical Center in early June. That set back his qualification for the human studies. Because of the delay, surgeons at the University of Louisville Health Science Center in Kentucky performed the first and second implants.
A 59-year-old man with diabetes and congestive heart failure was the first