3rd Artificial Heart Implant Set for Sunday
After nearly two months of screening heart implant candidates, Dr. William C. DeVries said Friday he had selected a 58-year-old retired Ford assembly line worker from Louisville as the third recipient of a permanent artificial heart.
Murray P. Haydon, a father of three and grandfather of four, is scheduled to undergo the experimental surgery Sunday morning at Humana Hospital Audubon here, where William J. Schroeder has survived 83 days with the second mechanical heart.
If Haydon’s surgery is successful, it will be the first time in history that two human beings are kept alive simultaneously by permanent artificial hearts. Dr. Barney Clark, a Seattle-area dentist, died in 1983, 112 days after receiving the first mechanical pump.
Robert Irvine, spokesman for Humana, said that Haydon suffers from chronic congestive heart failure “of an unknown cause” and without the implant could expect to live only “a matter of days.”
Haydon was first diagnosed as having heart disease in 1981 and was treated with medication, but the medication is no longer effective and “there is no surgical treatment for this type of end-stage heart disease,” Irvine said.
DeVries, the only surgeon with Food and Drug Administration approval to implant the device, reviewed Haydon’s medical history and discussed the procedure with the patient and his family.
Haydon was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday and after additional testing was approved on Thursday by the hospital’s Evaluation Committee.
He and his wife, Juanita, have been married 32 years and have three children--Diana, 30, Anita, 26, and Derek, 24. Haydon grew up in the small town of Horse Cave in southern Kentucky.
Took Medical Retirement
Haydon took a medical retirement from the Ford truck plant in Louisville in 1983. During his lifetime he has also worked as a barber, and he spent seven years in the military, both in the Air Force and the Army, including a combat assignment in Germany during World War II.
DeVries has said he wanted heart implant patient No. 3 to be a “dynamic, forceful fighter, a guy like Schroeder who wants to live.” DeVries interviewed more than 30 patients for the procedure before finding a candidate who met the criteria for the procedure.
Haydon will receive the Jarvik-7 heart, invented by Dr. Robert K. Jarvik in Utah. It is the same heart pump now beating inside Schroeder’s chest and is powered by an air compressor outside the body through tubes inserted through the patient’s abdomen.
Schroeder, who celebrated his 53rd birthday on Thursday with family members and hospital staff, was tired Friday from the party “but generally things seem to be going well for him,” Irvine said.
Plagued by Fever
A persistent fever has left Schroeder weak and with little appetite during the last two weeks, and doctors have delayed plans to move him to a renovated apartment across from the hospital. The apartment will be used as temporary quarters until he is well enough to return to Jasper, Ind.
Doctors have been unable to pinpoint the cause of Schroeder’s fever. At first, they called it the flu, but his sniffles and cough have disappeared. Tests have not indicated any infection and DeVries was quoted Thursday as saying: “I rather suspect we’re just going to have to wait it out.”
Schroeder suffered a stroke on Dec. 13 that damaged seven areas of his brain. Doctors presume the damage was caused by a shower of blood clots that broke off from one source in or around the artificial heart.
Schroeder’s doctors said recently they were discouraged by his lack of significant neurological improvement since the stroke. He still has trouble remembering events and persons he has met since the stroke, and he rarely initiates conversations.
Care Called Typical
DeVries has said Schroeder’s care has been typical of other post-stroke patients at the hospital and, therefore, represents no hurdle to performing a third implant.
DeVries performed the first implant, on Clark, at the University of Utah in 1982. He moved to Louisville last spring when Humana, the nation’s second largest for-profit hospital chain, promised to pay for 100 heart implants. Humana Hospital Audubon is home to the Humana Heart Institute International.
Clark suffered from seizures after his implant, but the fact that both Clark and Schroeder had neurological complications has not deterred DeVries. The surgeon, who has FDA approval for a total of seven implants, has said he will evaluate the merits of the plastic device after studying all seven cases. He said he hoped to complete them within two years.
