Artificial heart self-regulating Carmat for the first time implanted

On Wednesday in Paris, a 75-year-old man successfully implanted an artificial heart. This is not so new because artificial organ transplants have begun to be implemented in the 1980s of the last century.

>>> Successfully implanted artificial hearts for humans

However, this is the first time a fake artificial artificial heart produced by the company specializing in manufacturing Carmat artificial parts of France is implanted into a human being and more importantly, this is also an artificial heart. "first self-regulating" in the world, according to cardiac surgeon Alain Carpentier.

"Self-regulation" according to Carpentier's meaning means the ability to accelerate or slow the blood flow based on the physiological needs of the patient. If the patient performs a physical activity that requires a lot of energy, the artificial heart will respond immediately by beating faster. This is accomplished by micro-embedded sensors and corresponding algorithms that run on integrated microprocessors.

Most other types of artificial hearts, on the other hand, beat at a constant speed. Therefore, patients must avoid heavy exercise and risk becoming short of breath and exhaustion quickly.

According to a Reuters report, Carmat's artificial heart is about the size of an adult's heart and can transplant over 80% of men but only 20% of women. Carmat said they have started to develop a smaller version but the weight of the heart is still three times heavier than the real heart, about 900 grams.

The energy source for the heart is provided by an external Li-ion battery pack that the patient carries and a built-in fuel cell. Carmat's artificial heart is targeted to operate continuously for at least 5 years (about 230 million beats) although it was only tested for the first time on humans. The success of the transplant will be assessed based on the recipient's survival ability at least 1 month later.

The latest information about newly transplanted patients is that he is still receiving intensive care at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris."We are very pleased with this first transplant. Even so, it is still too early to draw conclusions about the transplant that has just been done and we are still in the early stages of the process. postoperative " , executive director Carmat - Marcello Conviti said.

If the testing activity goes smoothly, Carmat's artificial hearts are expected to be offered across Europe in early 2015 with prices ranging from $ 190,000 to $ 250,000.