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American Morning

World's First Self-Contained Artificial Heart Working

Aired July 04, 2001 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: As Americans huddle around picnic tables or line up along parade routes today, others are celebrating this Fourth of July with thoughts of a different kind of independence. They are people with failing hearts, and only a fifty-fifty chance of getting a lifesaving transplant. For them, this Fourth of July rings in with new hope, after the announcement that the world's first self- contained artificial heart is beating inside the chest of a man who was dying just days ago.

At any moment, a news conference is due to get underway at Louisville's Jewish Hospital, where the surgery took place.

Our medical news correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is there right now. She joins us with a bit of a preview -- Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Leon, in the building behind me, the person who received the world's first self- contained artificial heart is said to be resting comfortably. Very soon, we'll learn more about this person. Is it a man? Is it a woman? What's this person's age? What was their diagnosis? What caused their heart problems before receiving the artificial heart? And we'll find out is that heart working as they'd planned, because they've never put it in a human being before.

What we to know about this person, as you alluded to, they were told before receiving this heart that they had less than a month to live, so they were given the choice between that certain death and, basically, the uncertainty of this artificial heart. They don't know what it will do. They don't know how long the person will live. Their immediate hope, their immediate goal is for the person to live about six months.

Let's take a look at this heart and what exactly it does and what it looks like. There's an artificial heart right where the real one would be. Lower down in the person's torso is a rechargeable internal battery. There's also a controller that sets the pace and will tell the heart how much to pump and when to pump, and at what speed. There's also, you can see, a little radio wire on there, and that transmits to a console on the patients' bedside how the person is doing, the internal pressures, temperatures, things like that. There's also an external battery pack. A person can walk around with about four hours of battery life before those batteries would have to be switched out for new batteries. That's far in future. This patient is not up and walking. What they're looking at is is this heart performing as they had hoped -- Leon.

HARRIS: Thank you, Elizabeth.

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