| News From Transplant Week of April 14, 2002 / Vol. 3 No. 15 |
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7th Recipient of AbioCor Heart Dies After Surgery |
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Less than two weeks after Abiomed Inc. said it would delay further clinical trials of its self-contained artificial heart, doctors at Jewish Hospital in Louisville implanted the device into a gravely ill patient who died after surgery. Dr. Laman Gray Jr. said implanting the AbioCor heart was the "only option left for this patient," the seventh to receive the device, and added that the heart functioned as expected in the latest surgery. Gray reported that the otherwise unidentified 61-year-old man was stable after the five-hour operation, but his blood pressure dropped suddenly an hour after his chest was closed while he was still in the operating room. He said doctors reopened the man's chest and tried unsuccessfully to revive him. Only two of the patients who have received AbioCor hearts are still alive. The current longest-surviving recipient, Tom Christerson, 71, who received the AbioCor at Jewish Hospital in Louisville on Sept. 13, may soon go home to Central City, KY. He was discharged from the hospital on March 20 and has since been staying at a nearby hotel. The only other survivor of the original six men to receive the AbioCor hearts, James Quinn, 51, of Philadelphia, received his artificial heart at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia. All of the initial patients to receive the AbioCor were dying of heart failure and were too sick to qualify for human heart transplants. Other sources: Louisville Courier Journal |
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