Smaller Version of Jarvik-7 Implanted : Minnesotan Is 1st Woman to Get an Artificial Heart

A 40-year-old secretary who suffered a sudden and rare heart infection became the first female artificial heart recipient Thursday, getting a new, smaller model of the Jarvik-7 that fit into her chest cavity.

Doctors said Mary Lund of Kensington, Minn., was in critical but stable condition at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital and was responding after implant surgery and a second operation to check for internal bleeding.

Lund could open her eyes and move her arms and legs when asked, said Dr. Fredarick Gobel, a member of the hospital’s cardiac team. Gobel said her lungs seemed to be clear and her kidneys were beginning to function. Bleeding has not been a problem, he said.

‘Very, Very Weak’

Gobel said doctors would wait until the mystery virus that attacked her natural heart was eliminated from her body before replacing the plastic and metal Jarvik-7 with a human heart.

“We’ll take her situation day by day, hour by hour. It will be weeks before she is a candidate for a heart transplant,” Gobel said. “She is very, very weak.”

He said the artificial heart is “a bridge to a human heart transplantation” but that surgeons “were concerned the virus would attack” any new heart.

Lund is the world’s 12th artificial heart patient and the eighth to receive the Jarvik-7. Two of five who had permanent implants remain alive in Louisville, Ky., although both have suffered strokes.

The new Jarvik-7 heart, designed for a smaller chest cavity, is about the size of a tennis ball.