Pennsylvania Artificial Heart Patients Given Human Organs

Doctors Monday transplanted a human heart into a man who lived 11 days with a Penn State artificial heart, hours after surgeons in Pittsburgh performed the same operation for a man kept alive for four days by a Jarvik-7 pump.

Anthony Mandia, 44, the first recipient of the Penn State heart, was taken off a heart-lung machine and began relying on the unidentified female donor’s heart less than three hours into surgery Monday evening. Earlier, doctors rejected using another donor heart for him.

That heart, considered too big for Mandia, instead went to Thomas J. Gaidosh, 47, a factory worker who lived four days with the Jarvik-7 artificial heart in Pittsburgh.

Gaidosh, of Sutersville, was in critical condition after the 3 1/2-hour procedure, which surgeons described as “routine.”

Mandia, a Philadelphia bachelor whose own heart was failing, was given a mechanical heart during emergency surgery Oct. 18.

Gaidosh was conscious Monday afternoon and opened his eyes when asked to by doctors, said Dr. Bartley Griffith, who led the surgical team. “The new heart took over from the Jarvik-7 very nicely,” Griffith said. “The early indications are that survival is well within his grasp.

“I’m extremely pleased with his progress,” the doctor added.

Even though the Jarvik-7 worked well, Gaidosh’s transplant operation was performed as soon as possible because “there’s no better substitute today than a human heart,” Griffith said. He described the Jarvik-7 as the “Model T of the future.”

Gaidosh’s transplanted heart came from James Randall Riege, 26, of Alexandria, Ohio, who died Sunday night from injuries suffered in a traffic accident.