| News From Transplant Week of July 21, 2002 / Vol. 3 No. 29 |
|
AbioCor Heart Recipient Would Not Do It Again |
|
One of the two surviving recipients of an AbioCor mechanical heart -- a device viewed by some as a possible future alternative to heart transplants -- suggests that cardiac patients think twice before volunteering for trials of the implantable heart. James "Butch" Quinn, 52, who had the AbioCor implanted last Nov. 5 at the Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, has spent all but three weeks since the surgery in the hospital, dealing with complications that have included a small stroke, severe pneumonia, bleeding problems. Quinn was on a ventilator until the end of June and still is receiving oxygen through a tube in his throat. "I don't believe I would do it again simply because it's too much afterwards," Quinn told the Philadelphia Inquirer from his bed in the hospital intensive care unit. Quinn and Tom Christerson, a Kentucky man who went home in April seven months after receiving the device, are the only two of the six who have received the artificial heart who remain alive. The artificial heart, developed by Abiomed Inc., weighs about 2 pounds and replaces the lower chambers of a patient's failing heart with a hydraulic pump. Unlike other mechanical heart devices used to temporarily extend a patient's life until a heart transplant is possible, the AbioCor heart is designed to be a fully functioning replacement heart. No one has received an AbioCor heart since April, but a spokesperson said the trial is continuing and the company hopes to do a "significant number" of the eight more implants authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year. Abiomed's vice president for strategic policy and planning, Edward Berger, said the company did its best to prepare people who enrolled in the trial, all of whom were viewed as likely to otherwise die within a month, for the possible complications. But people who join such trials often view them as their only chance to live. "When things go well, patients and their families are going to be extraordinarily happy," Berger said. "When things don't go well, it is absolutely understandable that patients or their family are going to be distressed." Asked what
he would tell patients considering getting the AbioCor heart,
Quinn said: "Think. Think, and then do some more thinking."
Other sources: Inquirer, Abiomed |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
