An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case heart transplantation is impossible. Although other similar inventions preceded it going back to the late 1940s, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7, designed by Robert Jarvik and implemented in 1982. The first two patients to receive these hearts, Barney Clark and William Schroeder, survived 112 and 620 days beyond their surgeries, respectively.
An artificial heart is distinct from a ventricular assist device designed to support a failing heart. It is also distinct from a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, which is an external device used to provide the functions of both the heart and lungs and are only used for a few hours at a time, most commonly during cardiac surgery.
Read more about Artificial Heart: FDA Approved Artificial Hearts, Origins, Early Development, Recent Developments, Heart Assist Devices
Famous quotes containing the words artificial and/or heart:
“You must recollect however that I know nothing of painting & that I detest it, unless it reminds me of something I have seen or think it possible to see.... Depend upon it of all the arts it is the most artificial & unnatural—& that by which the nonsense of mankind is the most imposed upon.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“blue bead on the wick,
there’s that in me that
burns and chills, blackening
my heart with its soot,
I think sometimes not Apollo heard me
but a different god.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)