Living Without A Heart.

[Ruler of War 169]

Try to wrap your head around this: What's alive, but has no heartbeat, no pulse, and a flat-line on a monitor? No, it's not a riddle, it's a brand new leap in heart replacement technology that still has me scratching my head. In fact, if you tuned into NPR yesterday, you might have also had your mind blown by the latest invention to keep people alive who have suffered significant damage to their heart.

 

It's a heart replacement, without the heart.

 

 

Dr. Billy Cohn and Dr. Bud Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute developed a whirring device that pumps blood continuously to keep you alive when your heart stops working. It's based on the single ventricular assist device (like the one Dick Cheney has to keep him alive), except they doubled it to replace the entire heart. What happens next is the blood flows through your body, you stay alive, but you have absolutely no pulse or heartbeat. WEIRD. But genius.

 

You see, the heart beats because that's the way the heart is built, to pulse and process blood. But the only organ that needs that pulsing action is the heart. So if you're working on a continuous blood flow, you don't need the pulse. If you're lucky enough to visit the Texas Heart Institute and head over to the animal research laboratory, you'll meet Abigail the calf who is very much alive, but has no heartbeat or pulse. I really want to meet that cow.

 

 

The pair also had success (of a sort) when they installed the device in a human patient, Craig Lewis, who had a disease that was attacking his organs. Lewis had only 12 hours to live due to damage to his heart, and so gladly accepted the non-heart replacement. His wife reports him waking up from surgery alive, well, but with no heartbeat. Lewis lived another month before his disease attacked other organs, but his pump continued working.

 

Source:Medical breakthrough lets you live without a heartbeat

 

This is simply amazing.... I honestly don't know what to say.

[GhoztMan 219]

mind = blown

 

Memes aside, that's pretty amazing.. what a leap in technology.

[Speedskater 167]

So what if you work out (i don't know the limit of this thing) would it increase the blood flow or keep it the same O_O?

[JoshJayK 16,648]

Yeah I'm wondering that too.

[Major Zhuinden 128]

That's pretty amazing.

[XGhozt 410]

I think it would increase bloodflow, unless it was perfectly regulated to not. Either way this is really cool.

[Suteki 114]

Really freakin crazy. It would be interesting to go to a doctors office and the nurse doing a check up on your heart rate and pules and seeing their disbelief when they couldn't find one.....lol

[Speedskater 167]

I have to admit looking back at it i'm not too surprised by this a classmate of mine had a father who did heart transplants. he had some pretty cool technology involving people living without a heart. but not to this scale of course.

[Aloani 0]

they should make it where you can set the level of the blood flow. so soldiers can be fitted with one so when they are at war we can set it up a little higher to increase adrenline causing them to be powerful and fearless.

[Aloani 0]

they should make it where you can set the level of the blood flow. so soldiers can be fitted with one so when they are at war we can set it up a little higher to increase adrenline causing them to be powerful and fearless.

[<3. 7]

Cue religious wars.

[MCMo 3]

im just gonna say this: Fuck Yea.