Late last year, a French company called Carmat received approval in Europe for its total artificial heart. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a heart made of synthetic and biological materials intended for implantation into people who need heart transplants. Now, just half a year later, the first US patient has received one of the Carmat artificial hearts (CAH).
The transplant took place last week in a 39-year-old man at Duke University Hospital in North Carolina. The man didn’t go to the hospital expecting to have a heart transplant, but it ended up saving his life.
After experiencing unexpected heart failure, he was diagnosed with advanced coronary artery disease and went in for bypass surgery.
When his condition quickly worsened, his medical team realized bypass surgery wasn’t going to do it, but by that point a traditional heart transplant had become too risky. The patient was in the right place, because not just any transplant center could have implanted an artificial heart.
The device weighs 900 grams, or just under 2 pounds (about three times the weight of the average human heart). The external setup is a bit heavier; recipients will have to carry about nine pounds of equipment, including a controller, a bag of actuator fluid, and two battery packs. In the case of the Duke patient, his artificial heart will stay remotely connected to the hospital’s system so that his doctors can monitor it and be sure it’s functioning as it should.
Just days after the US transplant, a similar transplant took place in Naples, Italy, marking Carmat’s first commercial sale of the heart (the difference being that this patient’s transplant was planned, not done as part of a trial).
【小题1】What did the 39-year-old patient go to hospital expecting to have?| A．A heart failure. | B．A heart transplant. | C．A physical exam. | D．A bypass surgery. |
| A．Because that hospital had something to save his life. |
| B．Because there were the best doctors in that hospital. |
| C．Because he knew his medical team well enough. |
| D．Because he wanted an artificial heart. |
| A．Doctors. | B．Patients. | C．Researchers. | D．Nurses. |
| A．CAH Transplanted into First US Patient | B．Carmat Received Approval in Europe |
| C．First Commercial Sale of CAH | D．Man Saved by CAH |
