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The Heart
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The heart is an organ that serves as a pump to circulate the blood
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Artificial Heart
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In an exciting new breakthrough, scientists have implanted the first self-contained mechanical heart on July 3, 2001.
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It is widely known that heart disease is one biggest killers of Americans today. In fact seven hundred thousand Americans die every year because of damaged heart muscles. One resolution is transplanting hearts, but there is a shortage of hearts available for the procedure. However, not only is there a shortage of transplants, but transplants cause many problems. One problem is rejection of the heart because the body vies it as a foreign invader. In addition, the organ must be healthy and young. Storing the organ for a period of time and preventing clots also pose as problems. Although transplanting is a rather effective method, something had to help the people who died waiting for a new heart.
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In 1982, something was done when a team of doctors headed by Dr. William Devries operated on a man named Dr. Barney Clark. He was a sixty-one year old patient and inside of him, doctors placed the "Jarvik-7" heart. Yet, this method too brought on problems. People who went through this operation suffered much afterwards because the heart caused clots in the blood that caused strokes when pushed to the brain. Dr. Clark only survived 112 days with the artificial heart. The suffering of the patients brought on a ban of artificial heart surgery in the United States in 1989.
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If the heart is just a pump that pumps blood throughout the body, why are there so many complications? One problem is what would power the heart? Next, what would stop the artificial material from creating clots? How would the implant not be able to slip? Scientists are trying to find answers to these questions so that a total artificial heart maybe created.
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Up until now, doctors were discouraged and were using small devices to replace certain areas of the heart instead of the whole heart. For example, blood vessels can be replaced by ones made of polyurethane. Heart valves can be replaced by valves made out of plastic or metal alloy. Technology has stayed in this stage until the AbioCor heart was implanted.
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Surgeons from the University of Louisville implanted the artificial heart made of plastic and titanium altogether weighing two pounds. The amazing part about this advancement is the power source. It is actually under the skin and not connected to an external source. According to David M. Lederman, president and chief executive officer of Abiomed (the makers of AbioCor) one hundred thousand people can benefit from the artificial heart.
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Pacemakers
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Certain diseases make the heart unable to act as its own pacemaker. In other words, it cannot contract properly. A healthy heart produces electrical impulses causing the muscles of the heart to contract, pumping blood all around the body. Without a natural pacemaker, the person would die, therefore, artificial pacemakers are implanted into the person's body. The artificial pacemaker is placed under the patients skin and is connected to the heart by wires. These wires create electrical impulses to keep the heart beating.
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Like the artificial heart, many problems evolved like what type of power source should run the pacemaker. The first pacemaker in 1958 used a battery that only lasted two years. In 1988, a nuclear pacemaker was implanted to last 20 years. Now, microprocessors are attached to the pacemakers to adjust the heart's beating.
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