Doctors Give Gravely Ill Woman an Artificial Heart : Medicine: Her condition is critical but stable. Surgery is the first of its kind in the U.S. in nearly two years.
A gravely ill woman received an artificial heart in the nation’s first such operation in nearly two years.
Sharoyn Loughran, 46, was in critical but stable condition Tuesday after receiving the plastic-and-metal CardioWest pump Monday night during a four-hour operation at University Medical Center of the University of Arizona.
Doctors said the implant was meant to keep her alive until she can receive a human heart in a month or two.
Loughran was chosen for the device because her condition was deteriorating rapidly and a human heart was not available in time to save her, said Richard Smith, technical director of the Arizona transplant team.
Her near-total heart failure meant that she could not be saved with more commonly used devices that temporarily assist the heart, he said.
“If you have a heart that doesn’t do much work itself and the patient’s about to die . . . the best way to do that is with an artificial heart,” Smith said.
The operation was supervised by Dr. Jack G. Copeland, the hospital’s chief cardiothoracic surgeon. In 1985, he became the first surgeon to use an artificial heart as a bridge to a heart transplant. The patient received a human heart after nine days on a Jarvik-7 device and lived for 4 1/2 years.
The air-driven CardioWest heart is based on the Jarvik, which the Food and Drug Administration banned except in emergencies in 1990 because of mechanical problems. It was banned altogether in 1991 after its maker went out of business. Monday’s operation used an essentially identical heart made by a successor company.
The artificial heart model used in Monday’s operation is used in Canada and France, said Smith, who was not immediately able to say how many were in use there.
The other total artificial heart approved for experimental use in this country, made at the University of Pennsylvania, has not been implanted since April, 1991.
Like the Jarvik, the CardioWest heart offers only limited mobility. It is powered by a unit the size of a large TV set. Pneumatic tubes run from the unit into the patient’s chest.
