Paris (ISJ): French doctors have performed the first-ever implantation of an artificial heart on a person suffering from end-stage heart failure. The implantation was done on a 75-year-old French man by doctors at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris on Wednesday (Dec. 18)
The implantation went smoothly, with the prosthesis automatically providing blood flow at physiologic conditions, said the French biomedical firm CARMAT in a statement.
?The patient is currently being monitored in the intensive care unit. He is awake and talks with his family,? said the statement.
The device is made of ?microporous biological and synthetic biomaterials, including bovine tissue to reduce the likelihood of the body rejecting it. The device is expected to last for five years, unlike previous artificial hearts, which serves temporary relief.
?We are delighted with this first implant, although it is premature to draw conclusions given that a single implant has been performed and that we are in the early postoperative phase,? said Marcello Conviti, Chief Executive Officer of CARMAT.
The transplantation was carried out by a team of surgeons led by Alain Carpentier, who has spent 25 years working on the development of the artificial heart.
CARMAT heart is designed for patients suffering from chronic terminal heart failure. It weighs less than a kilogram and almost three times bigger than an average healthy human heart. It mimics heart muscle contractions and contains sensors to adopt blood flow according to the patient?s moves. It offers the patient comfort, quality of life and normal lifestyle.
The cost of the latest artificial heart is expected to be between EUR 140,000 and 180,000 (between Rs. 1.19 crore and 1.52 crore)
Over 1,00,000 patients across the world are waiting for heart transplant, but only less than 4,000 donor hearts are available for transplantation. Currently the treatment for heart failure is mostly palliative ? drugs, cardiovascular rehabilitation, multi-site pacing, conventional surgical revascularisation, mitral annuloplasty and mechanical circulatory assistance techniques. Heart transplantation is the only treatment for patients with advanced bi-ventricular heart failure and do not respond to any of these interventions.
