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artificial heart

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artificial heart

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Also known as heart, artificial

implanted medical device that pumps blood

Research

82,337 papers

via PubMed

~34 min read

Encyclopedic overview

An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used as a bridge to heart transplantation, but ongoing research aims to develop a device that could permanently replace the heart when a transplant—whether from a deceased human or, experimentally, from a genetically engineered pig—is unavailable or not viable. As of December 2023, there are two commercially available full artificial heart devices; both are intended for temporary use (less than a year) for patients with total heart failure who are awaiting a human heart transplant.

Although other similar inventions preceded it from the late 1940s, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by a team including Willem Johan Kolff, William DeVries and Robert Jarvik.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “artificial heart” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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