Heart Booster Developed in Russia

Tuesday September 06 , 2011

Researchers of the Academician V.I. Shumakov Federal Research Center of Transplantology and Artificial Organs in Moscow have developed the first Russian “heart booster” – a pump implanted into the patient’s chest, which takes over part of the weak heart functions, reports RIA News.

From the words of the project coordinator Georgii Itkin, the new miniature device as large as a child’s palm is radically different from its precursors, where the patient was literally bound to an external control device. A fully implantable “assistant” lets the patient lead a normal life until a compensation point is reached or while waiting for a heart transplant.

The device collects part of the blood from the left ventricle (the most overloaded heart section) and pumps it directly to the aorta, thus performing part of work load of the weak organ.

As the Director of the Center Sergei Gautier informed, the first experimental implantation in an animal was successful. The calf lived for six days with an additional artificial heart, and then it was turned off.

At the moment the animal is living on its own heart, while the developers continue to supervise its state. They assess how the organism reacts to the device and if there are any risks of post-implantation infectious complications.

Gautier forecasts that the first patient will be able to receive a “heart boost” in a year already, after additional experimental tests on animals. It is expected that a vast majority of the device recipients are going to be patients with cardiomyopathy on the waiting list for heart transplant.

The cost of the new device, by the estimates of the researchers, will be about 1.5 mln RUB, which is four times cheaper than the German models.

Tags: heart transplant, cardiomyopathy, Russia