Artificial heart fails test in 76-year-old

March 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Artificial heart fails test in 76-year-old

POSTED: 04 Mar 2014 10:46
An artificial heart, made of soft “biomaterials” and an array of sensors to mimic the contractions of the heart has failed to keep alive a 76-year-old man who received the ‘heart’ which aims to enable hospitalised patients to return home and maybe even resume work while waiting for a donor heart.

PARIS: After 75 days, a 76-year-old man given an artificial heart to prolong his life, has died.

The artificial heart, which is a self-contained unit implanted in the patient’s chest, is made of soft “biomaterials” and an array of sensors to mimic the contractions of the heart.

The ‘heart’ created by French biomedical firm Carmat, aims to provide a longer-term solution to bridge the wait for a donor heart and enable hospitalised patients to return home and maybe even resume work.

The 76-year-old man had received his artificial heart in December in a world first, performed after the French government gave its green light to the operation.

“Seventy-five days after the implant of the first Carmat artificial heart bioprosthesis in a 76-year-old man with a terminal heart disease, the patient died on March 2, 2014,” the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital said.

The hospital statement said the causes of death “will not be known until after a thorough analysis of the abundant medical and technical data that has been recorded”.

The surgeons who carried out the ground-breaking operation and subsequently monitored the patient’s progress were keen to “stress the significance of the initial findings drawn” from the experiment, the hospital’s statement said.

They paid homage to the patient, who was “fully aware of what was at stake and — with his trust, courage and will — made a memorable contribution to the medical battle against a growing disease.”

Artificial hearts have been in use for many years as a temporary fix for patients with chronic heart problems.

In the US, the rival to Carmat is an artificial heart called AbioCor, which has been authorised for use in the United States for patients with end-stage heart failure or life expectancy of less than 30 days, and who are not eligible for a natural heart transplant or any other viable treatment options.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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