Have you ever met someone that needed a heart transplant? Their heart was failing and the only way that they could continue to live and escape death was to have an operation to transplant their heart. But what if there was not a heart available for them when they required it the most? An artificial heart transplant would be a great option that could save their life. The artificial heart is one of the greatest inventions ever invented.
“Dr. Robert Jarvik is widely known as the inventor of the first permanent total artificial heart.” (Jarvikheart.com). Robert Koffler Jarvik is the outstanding inventor of the artificial heart which has saved many lives of Americans and other people throughout the world. Robert was born on May 11, 1946 in the city of Midland, Michigan. In his early life, Robert was an aspiring thinker and inventor growing up in his teenage years. His father was shortly diagnosed with heart disease while Jarvik was attending college and was majoring in zoology. This directed him towards a career in the medical field. Robert’s grades, however, were too poor to attend a ...
In this figure, SN = sinus node; AVN = AV node; RA = right atrium; LA
Attention Getter: A week and a half ago, there was a news article reporting that Dr. Bud Frazier was being honored for performing the most heart transplants nationwide. Specifically, he performed 1,500 heart transplants and implanted 1,000 left ventricular assist devices. He is also the man who invented the device. Where did the remarkable research and advances begin for organ transplants in human beings, and how did it make progress?
The development of the artificial heart began in the early 1950’s. The initial prototype, developed in 1970’s by the artificial developmental staff at the University of Utah, allowed 50 hours of sustained life in a sheep. Although this was called a success, the implantation of the artificial heart left the sheep in a weakened state. It wasn’t until late 1970’s and the early 1980’s where the improvement of the artificial heart actually received attention as a possible alternative to a heart transplant. The remodeled product of the early 1970’s did more than just the 50 hours of sustained life; it enabled the cow to live longer and to live a relatively normal life, with the exception of a machine attached to the animal.
The science and history of the heart can be traced back as far as the fourth century B.C. Greek philosopher, Aristotle, declared the heart to be the most vital organ in the body based on observations of chick embryos. In the second century A.D, similar ideas were later reestablished in a piece written by Galen called On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. Galen’s thesis was that the heart was the source of the body’s essential heat and most closely related to the soul. Galen made careful observations of the physical properties of the heart as well. He said “The heart is a hard flesh, not easily injured. In hardness, tension, in general strength, and resistance to injury, the fibers of the heart far surpasses all others, for no other instrument performs such continues, hard work as the heart”(Galen, Volume 1).
Brendan Maher, in his article “How to Build a Heart” discusses doctor’s and engineer’s research and experimentation into the field of regenerative medicine. Maher talks about several different researchers in this fields. One is Doris Taylor, the director of regenerative medicine at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. Her job includes harvesting organs such as hearts and lungs and re-engineering them starting with the cells. She attempts to bring the back to life in order to be used for people who are on transplant waiting lists. She hopes to be able to make the number of people waiting for transplants diminish with her research but it is a very difficult process. Maher says that researchers have had some successes when it comes to rebuilding organs but only with simples ones such as a bladder. A heart is much more complicated and requires many more cells to do all the functions it needs to. New organs have to be able to do several things in order for them to be used in humans that are still alive. They need to be sterile, able to grow, able to repair themselves, and work. Taylor has led some of the first successful experiments to build rat hearts and is hopeful of a good outcome with tissue rebuilding and engineering. Scientists have been able to make beating heart cells in a petri dish but the main issue now is developing a scaffold for these cells so that they can form in three dimension. Harold Ott, a surgeon from Massachusetts General Hospital and studied under Taylor, has a method that he developed while training. Detergent is pumped into a glass chamber where a heart is suspended and this detergent strips away everything except a layer of collagen, laminins, and other proteins. The hard part according to Ott is making s...
In the early 1950s, the first ever amazing invention of an external cardiac Pacemaker was developed by Dr. John Hopps. It was large (about 30 cm long, and several centimetres high and wide), the pulses were generated by vacuum tubes and the entire unit was powered by 60 Hz household current.(The Pacemaker) Hopps was an electric engineer appointed by the National Research Council of Canada in 1941 after training at the University of Manitoba as an electrical engineer. Pacemakers helped with the pumping of blood by sending electric signals but it occupied too much space. John Hopps was recognized as “The Father of Biomedical Engineering”. "The financial cost of the pacemaker was minimal" which made the pacemaker even popular and appealing as a weapon to treat problems in rhythm of the heart. (Drew)
They have now invented a “beating heart transplant.” It consists of a mechanical system to keep the heart beating, while it is being transferred to the candidate. Statistics have proven that these candidates have a higher recovery rate, because of the “beating heart.” Throughout reading above, it is a given that organ donation is vital to saving lives, but it is not deemed proper to be made mandatory.
...n years. Matching a human heart to a particular person is difficult. Most families describe the hardest part of the heart replacement procedure to be the wait for a matching heart. Some people never find one and have to accept that their child will be outlived by them. People are suffering and dying. If embryonic stem cells were researched more, healing damaged hearts would be easier and more effective. Patients and families wouldn’t have to wait months or years to receive a heat to help their children, mothers, sisters, or brothers.
The human body; it starts off as a single cell, and grows into a complex machine made of seventy eight distinct organs, two hundred and six bones, and millions of nerves that all communicate with each other to regulate body processes and keep the machine alive and healthy. This seemingly perfect system undergoes countless attacks every day, and manages to recover from most, although occasionally, it can not. Diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis and Coronary Artery Disease, or abnormalities and defects such as biliary atresia, can all disrupt the function of human organs (“Transplant Australia”, n.d ). Thankfully, through radical advancements in modern medicine, organ transplants are a safe and highly viable option to restore the human body’s perfect harmony. No matter the reason for organ failure, once it occurs, the patient’s journey to receiving a new organ begins. Through the matching of organs, the process and the complications that come with it, the ethical issues, and trials of new advancements, the journey is a long one.
The behavior of the narrator in The Tell-Tale heart demonstrate characteristic that are associated with people with obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoid schizophrenia . When Poe wrote this story in 1843 obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoia had not been discovered. However in modern times the characteristics demonstrated by the narrator leads people to believe that he has a mental illness. Poe’s narrator demonstrates classic signs throughout the story leading the reader to believe that this character is mad
The Tell-Tale Heart: An Analysis In Edgar Allan Poe’s short-story, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the storyteller tries to convince the reader that he is not mad. At the very beginning of the story, he asks, "...why will you say I am mad? " When the storyteller tells his story, it's obvious why. He attempts to tell his story in a calm manner, but occasionally jumps into a frenzied rant.
Just as breast cancer is killing our African American women, heart disease is also one of the major diseases killing our women. Heart disease is one of the nation’s leading causes of death in both woman and men. About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States (Americas heart disease burden, 2013). Some facts about heart disease are every year about 935,000 Americans have a heart attack. Of these, 610,000 are a first heart attack victim. 325,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack. Also coronary heart disease alone costs the United States $108.9 billion each year. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and loss of productivity. Deaths of heart disease in the United States back in 2008 killed about 24.5% of African Americans.
Lidwell and Edgar H. Booth invented the first pacemaker. It was a portable device that consisting of two poles, one of which included a needle that would be plunged into a cardiac chamber. It was very crude, but it succeeded in reviving a stillborn baby at a Sydney hospital in 1928. The decades that followed, inventors came up with increasingly sophisticated versions of the pacemaker. However, these devices; which relied upon vacuum tubes; remained heavy and bulky, affording little or no mobility for patients. Colombian electrical engineer Jorge Reynolds Pombo developed a pacemaker in 1958 weighed 99 lbs and was powered by a 12-volt auto battery. Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden were the first to place a fully implantable device into a patient in 1958. Rune Elmqvist and surgeon Ake Senning invented this pacemaker, which was implanted in the chest of Arne Larsson. The first device failed after three hours, the second after two days. Larsson would have 26 different pacemakers implanted in him. He died at the age of 86 in 2001, outliving both Elmqvist and Senning. In the world there are many heart attacks and as people grow they can get abnormalities in there heart(Medlineplus). When someone 's heart stops working it can be fixed with a pacemaker, it makes the heart beat properly. The artificial pacemaker is a wonder of modern science. A small, implantable device that regulates a human heartbeat through electrical impulses have saved millions of lives. The development of this vital medical device owes much to the advances in electronics and communications brought about by the Space Age.Pacemakers may be used for people who have heart problems that cause their heart to beat too slowly. A slow heartbeat is called Bradycardia two common problems that cause a slow heartbeat are sinus node disease and heart block. When your heart
One of the most beneficial aspects to cloning is the ability to duplicate organs. Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving a needed organ. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need for a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suff...
To reiterate, bioengineering will bring hope to the people who are in need of organ and body replacements in order to live a completed life. They will no longer need to wait weeks, months, or years for transplants that may or may not be given to them on time. Bioengineering will help solve medical problems of human beings using engineering concepts. Bioengineers will not only help the person’s medical complication, but it will also help their mentality, of feeling better about themselves and avoiding suicidal thoughts. I believe that bioengineering will create a new world where transplant lists will be immensely reduced, a world where there will be fewer disabilities, and a world where many lives will be saved. Bioengineering will change the world.