Third Heart Implant Is Successful : Patient in Stable Condition After 3 1/2-Hour Surgery

In a smooth 3 1/2-hour operation Sunday, Dr. William C. DeVries and his surgical team implanted an artificial heart in Murray P. Haydon, and for the first time permanent man-made heart pumps were keeping two human beings alive simultaneously.

Haydon, a 58-year-old retired assembly line worker, was in “very stable” condition after becoming the third recipient of a permanent artificial heart, said Dr. Allan M. Lansing, medical director of Humana Heart Institute International.

Haydon’s vital signs remained stable Sunday night, and he was “awake and aware and has moved all of his limbs,” Humana spokesman George Atkins said.

Haydon squeezed his wife’s hand during one of her visits to his bedside, and the hospital staff and family are “elated over his progress,” Atkins added.

‘No Complications’

“All in all it was very successful . . . with no complications--a smooth procedure,” Lansing said, adding that he hoped Haydon would be the first recipient to make a full recovery.

The operation to implant the plastic-and-metal Jarvik-7 heart was the quickest yet, beginning about 7:45 a.m. and ending about 11:15 a.m. The first recipient, Dr. Barney Clark, underwent a 7-hour operation, and William J. Schroeder’s surgery lasted 6 1/2 hours.

Haydon’s operation was “much more routine,” and the surgical team felt little of the controlled excitement that characterized the previous implants. “When it was all over, everybody said, ‘Man, that went well,’ ” Lansing said.

One nurse remarked: “Boy, this is a dull operation,” according to Dr. Robert K. Jarvik, the Utah inventor of the artificial heart who was in the operating room.

Operation Called ‘Routine’

The implant, which lasted about as long as a normal open heart operation, seemed to have “become routine, something that is no big deal,” Jarvik said.

“I hope we have arrived at a point where in the next 20, 50 or 500 years there will always be at least one patient living with an artificial heart--and someday many,” he added.

It was DeVries’ second implant in three months and marked the beginning of an important test of the experimental device.

Clark suffered numerous problems during his 112 days of life with the heart, and Schroeder, while in somewhat better shape, continues to suffer the effects of post-implant strokes and has not left the hospital in 85 days with the heart.

Haydon’s wife, Juanita, and children gathered in an upstairs room of the hospital and received updates by messenger from the operating room. They were joined by Mrs. Haydon’s parents and Haydon’s pastor, the Rev. Robert Williams of Clifton Baptist Church.

Schroeder’s wife, Margaret, stopped by after the operation to congratulate Mrs. Haydon and the family. Although Haydon and Schroeder have not met, Schroeder was told about Haydon’s implant and responded: “That’s good,” according to Lansing.

Schroeder, 53, was a little stronger Sunday but still had a slight fever, Lansing said.

On Nov. 25, Schroeder was in the operating room twice as long as Haydon, because scar tissue from previous coronary bypass surgery made the surgery more tedious. The scar tissue caused excessive bleeding that forced Schroeder back into the operating room four hours after the implant.

Schroeder, whose strokes were caused by blood clots originating in or near the new heart, still has short-term memory losses and also has difficulty communicating. His mental capacity has been so weakened that hospital staff members doubt that he will ever be able to safely operate the drive units that power the mechanical heart.

The Jarvik-7 heart is driven by compressed air pumped through tubes inserted through the abdomen.

The procedure in the cases of Haydon and Schroeder were similar--with one major difference. Because of his bleeding, Schroeder was not given blood-thinning medication until several days after his surgery.

Given Anti-Coagulants

Haydon, who had no scar tissue and had no significant bleeding on Sunday, was immediately put on a mild dose of anti-coagulants as he was wheeled out of the operating room.

“We’re not sure that was a factor” in Schroeder’s strokes, “but we felt we could not afford to take any chances,” Lansing said.

Haydon suffered from idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease that progressively weakened and enlarged his heart. Clark and Schroeder also had chronic congestive heart failure.

Aside from his heart, and weight loss caused by poor circulation, Haydon had no other major medical problems.

A 40-year, pack-a-day smoker, Haydon quit smoking when his heart disease was diagnosed in 1981, and he began taking heart medication. Lansing said, though, that Haydon’s heart disease was not related to smoking and probably was caused by a viral infection early in life.

Haydon, whose hobbies include history and working puzzles, took a disability retirement last year from the Ford Motor Co. truck plant here, where he had worked for 14 years.

Doctors said Haydon’s natural heart would have kept him alive no more than two or three weeks. The heavy doses of heart medication had stopped working and he was turned down as a heart transplant candidate by both Humana and an Indianapolis hospital because he was considered too old, Lansing said.

Solid Background

Haydon grew up in Horse Cave, Ky., and had the kind of solid, Midwestern background that DeVries and his team look for in implant candidates. He and his wife, married for 32 years, have three children. Their fifth grandchild, Daniel Murray Haydon, was born on Friday, also at Humana Hospital Audubon.

Because he entered the operation in better physical shape than either of his predecessors, Haydon’s first few days and weeks will be important indicators of the future of the implant program.

Clark and Schroeder had neurological difficulties--seizures in Clark’s case and strokes with Schroeder--after receiving the hearts. Clark, however, had lung and other organ problems before surgery, and Schroeder, a diabetic, was already at a higher risk for strokes.

In Haydon, “we’re down to just what is the effect of the heart itself,” Lansing said. “The presence of other diseases can mask that.”

Any neurological difficulty Haydon experiences would likely add to the doubts some medical experts already have about the procedure.

Clark suffered seizures five days after his Dec. 2, 1982, surgery, and the seizures produced weeks of depression. The 62-year-old Seattle-area dentist died of circulatory collapse brought on by multiple organ failure.

Significance Stressed

DeVries, who has Food and Drug Administration approval for four more implants, has said that the mechanical heart program, if it proves successful, could give hope to many of the 50,000 to 60,000 Americans who die of heart disease each year.

Critics have questioned whether the artificial heart, even if it proves successful, is a proper way to spend limited resources for medical treatment and whether it is proper for a for-profit hospital chain, such as Humana Inc., to be participating in vanguard research.

Humana, which has agreed to pay for 100 implants, has estimated that the procedure will cost about $100,000 per patient during the experimental stage and considerably less if it becomes an accepted medical procedure.