Recipient of Heart Device Returns Home
The longest-surviving recipient of a self-contained artificial heart returned home Tuesday, seven months after his operation, waving to well-wishers as he rode a wailing firetruck through town.
“It’s good to be home,” Tom Christerson, 71, said after the caravan of dozens of vehicles pulled up to his house in this town 125 miles southwest of Louisville.
He was given a plastic-and-titanium AbioCor heart at Jewish Hospital in Louisville on Sept. 13. Christerson, the second recipient of the device, was released from the hospital March 20 and had been living at a hotel one block away.
He is one of two heart recipients still living.
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