Medical and Materials Issues of the Total Artificial Heart: 1987 MRS Fall Meeting Plenary Address

Extract

It really is my pleasure to be here and talk with you because I think that the future of my field is really your field. Those of you here will really be the ones who determine what we in the medical field can do, and how much of what we can do will be the discussion we'll have in the future. I'd like to speak a little bit about something that's been dear to my heart for about 20 years now and that is the development of a total artificial heart. I brought this picture (Figure 1) of the Jarvik, the J-7 100 heart, to show you an example. It is basically a polyurethane rigid casing and polyurethane diaphragm. The diaphragm has four layers … with graphite between them. The movable pumping diaphragm is nondistensible so the walls never touch the outer casing, which is necessary to prevent destruction of blood. There are four clinical-grade valves….. This is a very simple basic device.

The idea of the artificial heart first came from Charles Lindbergh. Shortly after coming back from his trans-Atlantic flight, he was told his aunt was dying from aortic stenosis. The doctor said that if there was some way they could actually stop the heart or bypass the heart … long enough to fix the valve, she could live.