Artificial Heart, History and Function - Essay Example

Lecturer: Artificial Heart, History and Function An artificial heart serves the function of replacing the heart especially during heart transplants or when there is a permanent need to replace the heart. Some inventions may have preceded this but the first artificial heart that came to be implanted in a human being successfully was a Jarvick-7 model designed by Robert Jarvick. That was in 1982 (Vlad, Ciupa and Nicu 321). However, in 1953, a heart-lung machine was used. This was during a successful operation which was done by Dr.

John Heysham Gibbon who carried out the operation. Most of the problems that came as a result of the Jarvick inventions were associated with the bodies rejecting the devices. This prompted Dayton of Ohio to develop a polymer that would be accepted by the body of a human being. July 3, 1952, a successful heart surgery was done by use of the mechanical heart acting as a substitute during the operations. That was at the Harper University Hospital, Wayne State University in Michigan, USA. A machine called Dodrill-GMR was used during the operation’s success.

The doctor’s in operation, Dr. Forest Dewey Dodrill and Dr. Matthew Dudley noted that this was the first operation that an artificial machine had fully replaced the functions of the heart during an operation. This discovery did set the pace for other inventions and experiments in the same field. In 1949, Yale school doctors, William Glenn and William Sewell made a pre cursor to this artificial heart-pump that was seen to bypass the heart of a dog for more than one hour. Many other inventions have followed since these discoveries were made.

This created discoveries both in the USA and in other places all over the world leading to the now fully functional artificial heart. Patients eligible for receiving these hearts are those whose hearts are on the verge of collapsing due to a collection of problems associated with heart failures. The main disadvantage of these hearts is that they do not operate like the natural hearts where they have to be powered making the user to lack ability to continue with active life (Davidson, Bunker and Lubeck 42).

References Davidson, Dennis, John P. Bunker and Deborah P. Lubeck. The artificial heart : cost, risk, and benefits. Washington : DIANE Publishing, 1981. Vlad, Simona, Radu V. Ciupa and Anca I. Nicu. International Conference on Advancements of Medicine and Health Care through Technology. Print. Cluj-Napoca, Romania : Springer, 2010.