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One day soon mechanical hearts could replace our flesh and blood ones

Back in 1982, Barney Clark became the first person to live without a human heartbeat when he had the Jarvik 7 artificial heart implanted in his chest.

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Since then, thousands of others have joined him, but none have been able to permanently live with an artificial heart.

But someday (possibly soon), science will develop artificial hearts that beat as well as our own flesh-and-blood ones, according to The Verge.

SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart
SynCardia's artificial heart compared to a human heart. SynCardia Systems, Inc./Wikimedia Commons

But today they're still merely a temporary bridge between a failing heart and an organ transplant. To get there, artificial hearts are going to have to be more reliable, more contained, and more acceptable to live with.

Biotech company SynCardia Systems plans to apply for US Food and Drug Administration approval for the first permanent artificial heart soon, The Verge's Joaquin Palomino reports, and has started clinical trials to do so. The FDA approved SynCardia's total artificial heart called the CardioWest for temporary use in 2004, and the company has implanted its hearts in over 1,500 patients to date.

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About 4,000 people at any given time need a heart transplant in the US, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, and only 2,300 human hearts are available for transplant every year. The materials used in artificial hearts today are biocompatible plastic and metal, so the body doesn't attack and reject them like it can with donor hearts.

The human heart is an electrical powerhouse that can pump thousands of gallons of blood through our bodies per day. Replacing it with a plastic or metal model has been especially difficult, since the artificial heart needs to work flawlessly, non-stop, and needs a lot of power to do it.

Our hearts get power straight from our blood. But we haven't developed electronics that can do anything like that, so artificial hearts are powered by external batteries or are plugged into the wall.

With SynCardia's artificial heart, surgeons partially remove the patient's failing heart, and put the Freedom portable driver in its place. The device has two tubes that come out of the patient's stomach and connect to the external power source, which have to be carried around in a backpack.

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SynCardia says its device costs $124,800, plus service costs — and that's just a layover on the way to the $1 million a natural heart transplant costs before insurance.

abiocor artificial heart
AbioCor's artificial heart. REUTERS
Next generation technologies

French company Carmat is developing a permanent artificial heart. But their device also has small lithium ion batteries that have to be worn outside the body. It hasn't reached the market yet and is still testing its model in very small trials — the third patient just received his in April of this year.

In order for artificial hearts to become permanent, they're going to have to be fully implantable — batteries and all — inside the chest.

Competing company AbioCor, which received limited FDA approval in 2006, is working on that solution. The batteries in their device are actually placed inside the body, removing any wires or external connections that the other devices out there today have. "A coil implanted under the skin can receive energy (by induction) from an external power source to recharge the implanted battery," the FDA explains.

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Reuters artificial heart graphic
REUTERS

Artificial hearts have come a long way, and they have a lot farther to go, but they could one day extend people's lives past what our bodies allow naturally.

"Cheers for the artificial heart, and I certainly am in the camp that would say let's continue to develop them, let's continue to perfect them," New York University Bioethicist Art Caplan says in a video on the topic. "But let's also keep in mind that even a successful technology can raise some very tough ethical and economic issues that have to be part of our discussion."

Since an artificial heart can be kept beating long after the body around it dies, when does one make the choice to flip the switch?

Read more about the quest to create a permanent artificial heart at The Verge >

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