Recipient of Artificial Heart at UCLA Dies

A 74-year-old man who received a fully implantable artificial heart eight weeks ago at UCLA has died, hospital officials said Thursday.

The man, who remains unidentified, was the fourth of six people to have received the heart and the third to die. All the deaths have been from conditions unrelated to the artificial heart itself.

Robert Tools, the first person to receive the implant, died from uncontrolled bleeding in his stomach. An unidentified Houston man, the sixth to receive the heart, died from bleeding during the operation to implant it.

Like all patients who have been allowed to receive the experimental AbioCor artificial heart, the UCLA patient was extremely ill when the device was implanted Oct. 17--too ill to be considered a candidate for a heart transplant. He died of multiple organ failure, according to his doctors.

Although the artificial heart continued to function well, life support was withdrawn at the request of his family.

“The patient and his family showed great courage,” said Dr. Hillel Laks, who headed the team that implanted the heart. “We are all grieved that we could not extend his life further and return him to a better quality of life. His participation in this clinical trial was of enormous value in proving the effectiveness and reliability of this artificial heart.”

The patient is survived by his wife, seven children and 10 grandchildren.

In a statement issued by UCLA, his wife said, “We hope that part of his legacy will be that he reached out to help others by taking part in this groundbreaking research and that his participation will ultimately help benefit mankind. He had expressed an appreciation that medical research had helped him in the past and he wanted to give something back.”

The three deaths in the program so far are not a surprise. Under Food and Drug Administration rules governing tests of medical equipment, the studies can be performed only on the sickest of the sick--patients projected to have only a few days or a couple of weeks of life left.

At the beginning of the program, officials of the company that makes the heart, Abiomed Inc. of Danvers, Mass., said they expected the grapefruit-sized devices to keep patients alive only for about 30 days.

They have done much better than that. Tools survived 151 days, the UCLA patient 56 days. The three surviving patients have now carried the hearts for 92, 78 and 38 days.

Most experts believe results will be substantially better when surgeons are allowed to implant the device into healthier patients, such as those eligible for a heart transplant.