2nd Artificial Heart Recipient Now Able to Walk With Help
The second person to receive a self-contained artificial heart has begun walking with assistance and no longer requires a machine to breathe, his doctors said.
Tom Christerson’s doctors said they were encouraged by his progress at Jewish Hospital, though he lags behind a pace set by Robert Tools, the first recipient of the AbioCor heart.
After three months, Tools was taking trips outside the hospital. He died Nov. 30, after almost five months with the plastic-and-titanium device in his chest.
Christerson, 70, who has lived with the artificial heart for three months, was not as sick or weak as 58-year-old Tools at the time of surgery, Dr. Laman Gray said.
But Christerson’s recovery has been slower because of his age and he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which progressively reduces how much air the lungs can hold, Gray told the Louisville Courier-Journal in Wednesday’s editions.
Four more implants have been done since Christerson’s: in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
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