This 10,000-rpm, no-pulse maudlin heart doesnt correspond an organic heart--and might be all the better for it
By Dan BaumPosted 02.29.2012 at 12:13 pm
Artificial Heart Jack Thompson
Meeko the calf stood nuzzling a pile of hay. He didnt seem to have much appetite, and he looked a low bored. Every now and then, he glanced up, as though inquire why so many people with clipboards were standing well-nigh watching him.
Fourteen hours earlier, Id watched doctors lift Meekos heart from his body and place it, still beating, in a plastic dish. He looked no worse for the experience, whisking away a fly with his tail as he nibbled, demonstrably alive(predicate)â€"though above his head, a monitor showed a flatlined pulse. I held a stethoscope to his warm, fragrant flank and heard, instead of the deep lub-dub of a heartbeat, what sounded like a dentists drill or the under pee whine of an outboard motor. Something was keeping Meeko alive, still it was goose egg like a heart.
As many as quintette million Americans suffer some form of heart failure, but only well-nigh 2,000 hearts a year aim available for transplant. The obvious solution to that scarcity is to build an artificial heart, and how hard could that be?
The hearts just a pump, after all, and people have been making pumps since the Mesopotamians invented the shadoof to raise river water 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. Doctors started thinking seriously about replacing the heart with a machine around the age Harry Truman was president.
To understand why they still havent succeeded, pick up a two-pound barbell and start curling it. cardinal pounds: nothing. But see how long you can keep it up. 20 minutes? An hour? Two? Your heart does that all sidereal day and all nightâ€"35 million beats a yearâ€"for as long as you live, without ever fetching a rest. Manufacturing a metal and plastic heart fitted of beating that way for more than about 18 months has so far proved impossible.
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