Tucson, Arizona - On 9 June 2011, Steven Tsui, director of heart and lung transplantation at Papworth Hospital in the UK, performed the UK's first implant of the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH) on 40-year-old Matthew Green.
Green, who suffered from arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a heart muscle disease that results in arrhythmia, heart failure and sudden death, has now been supported with the Total Artificial Heart for nearly 600 days while awaiting a transplant.
The temporary device, weighing only 160g, uses ventricles made from a polyurethane biomaterial, and has an external battery, compressed air piston pump and flexible blood sack - weighing 6 kg, all stored in a rucksack -- to pump blood around the body.
SynCardia Systems Inc., which makes the only FDA, Health Canada and CE approved Total Artificial Heart, says an article in the December 2012 issue of the British Journal of Hospital Medicine describes the surgery on Green: "The total artificial heart in a cardiac replacement therapy programme."
The article's authors, Tsui and his colleague James Barnard, note that, "The total artificial heart circumvents some of the limitations of using a left ventricular assist device alone, including right ventricular failure, refractory arrhythmias and surgical issues arising after myocardial infarction such as post-infarct ventricular septal defects."
The Freedom portable driver is the world's first wearable power supply for the SynCardia TAH. The Freedom driver is CE-approved for use in Europe and undergoing an FDA-approved Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) clinical study in the US.
Read the article at http://www.syncardia.com/PDF_Files/BJHM.pdf
