Artificial Heart Can Increase The Lifespan of Patients Who Have Heart Problems

What Exactly Is An Artificial Heart?

A company in Arizona called SynCardia Systems is making life a lot easier for people who are waiting to get a heart transplant. This company is also helping patients live a longer life. SynCardia Systems makes artificial hearts. The artificial heart is a device that is designed to replace the ventricles of the heart. It helps the heart pump blood throughout the body. The artificial heart has as much power as a 48V switching power supply.

Not only can this device save lives, but it is also portable. In the past, patients would have to stay in the hospital while they waited to get a heart transplant. Today, they are able to go home if they have an artificial heart.

Daquain Jenkins And His Artificial Heart

Daquain Jenkins, who resides in New York, is one of the patients who has been implanted with an artificial heart. Jenkins had actually received a heart transplant back in 2011. However, the transplant failed, and the doctors elected to replace the transplanted heart with an artificial heart. This artificial heart has saved Jenkins’s life. His health had begun to deteriorate rapidly, and doctors decided that his only hope for survival was an artificial heart.

Jenkins is 29 years old, and he found out that he had congenital heart disease when he was 25 years old. This was the same condition that killed his biological father at the age of 28.

The procedure of removing Jenkins’s transplanted heart and replacing it with an artificial one took eight hours. Today, he is enjoying the simple things that most people take for granted, such as walking his children to the bus stop. Jenkins is hoping that he will be able to get another heart transplant within the next year. Until then, he is able to enjoy a relatively normal life with his artificial heart. He has also decided to take online classes at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. He is studying web design.

The Artificial Heart of The Future

Dr. Anelechi Anyanwu, the surgeon who performed Jenkins’s surgery stated that even though this device is very efficient, there is still a lot of room for improvement. He also stated that the artificial heart only moves the blood in one direction.

People are already working to make artificial hearts more efficient. In the future, there will be better power supplies and smaller pumps. Even though there are a lot of improvements that need to be made, the current version has already helped add 300 extra years to patients’ lives. Some surgeons are hopeful that patients will one day be able to get a permanent artificial heart in lieu of a heart transplant.