Artificial Heart Lacks Supporters Except for DeVries
The death of William J. Schroeder, the world’s longest survivor on an artificial heart, may well spell the end of an era in which artificial hearts were seen as a permanent solution for those terminally ill with heart disease.
Although the time probably will come again when artificial devices are seen as acceptable permanent substitutes for the natural organ, most surgeons and knowledgeable individuals now agree that the currently available devices are inadequate for the job.
The lone exception appears to be Dr. William C. DeVries, the Louisville surgeon who has performed four of the five permanent implants done to date, including the one he implanted in Schroeder in 1984. According to spokesmen at Louisville’s Humana Hospital Audubon, where three of the four were done, DeVries still has authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to perform three more, although he has not implanted an artificial heart permanently in a patient since April, 1985.
DeVries Not Giving Up
DeVries said Wednesday night that he was not giving up on the artificial heart program and was “ready to go and move on again . . . . We’re very anxious to find another patient.”
And, at a meeting in Washington last October attended by nearly all of the surgeons then using the artificial heart, DeVries was the only one who said he is still willing to use the device as a permanent implant.
Most of the other surgeons said they would continue to use artificial hearts only as a temporary “bridge” to sustain life until a human donor heart becomes available for transplantation. Their enthusiasm for permanent implants had been dampened by a serious side effect in such patients: the threat of strokes, which are caused by blood clots that form on the device’s inner walls and then break off and lodge in the brain.
Other surgeons cited as another factor the restrictions placed on a patient’s movements by the bulky air compressor that powers the heart.
‘Inevitably’ Will Fail
At the same meeting, Dr. Jack Copeland of the University of Arizona said that permanent artificial hearts “inevitably” will fail within 200 to 400 days, but that human heart transplants are “here to stay.”
To date, a total of 12 temporary implants have been done, according to Art Ciarkowski of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. In 10 cases, the implant was a Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the same device DeVries used for his four permanent implants. The other two were Penn State hearts developed by that university in Hershey, Pa.
Not all of the individuals who received an artificial heart as a temporary bridge have been successful in finding a donor for a new heart.
Bernadette Chayrez, a patient at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson, who received two Jarvik implants in February, 1986, still is awaiting a heart donor. So is Robert Cresswell, a recipient of a Penn State heart last March, who was described Wednesday as being in critical condition.
The quest for an artificial heart began in the 1950s, and since 1964 the federal government has contributed about $200 million for such research.
