Friday, November 07, 2008

Artificial Heart


Heart is a specialized muscle that maintains the oxygen availability by pumping blood through out the body. Heart can also be described as an engine that keeps the body running and keeps functioning by the flow of electricity in a cycle. The disruption of electric cycle results in a heart failure resulting the symptoms of chest pain, weight gain caused by fluid retention, swelling of leg, shortness of breath, and has the most dominant patients than other disease. But now a day, it can be cured by the transplant of artificial heart.

In past, the transplant of heart was conducted for the heart failure patients but the lack of donor was the serious problem for conducting heart transplant. In US, nearly 10000 patients were having the heart transplantation annually. On July 2001, the first artificial heart transplant was conducted in Louisville, Kentucky. The artificial heart will replace ventricles having the same atria, forcing blood out one ventricle at a time. Hence, It will alternatively send blood to the lungs and body same as the natural heart. The artificial heart of the AbioCor pumps more than 10 liters of the blood per minute which is enough for the daily activities. The mechanism behind this device is the hydraulic pump that commutes hydraulic fluid from side to side.

The success on artificial heart transplant has given a hope bioengineers for the artificial organ transplant in order for the treatment of disease.

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