Artificial Hearts — Permanent and Temporary

Abstract

A little more than three years ago, at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Dr. William DeVries implanted a Jarvik-7 artificial heart in a 61-year-old patient named Barney Clark. The patient lived 112 days with the device before succumbing to renal failure, infection, and pseudomembranous colitis.¹ His stormy clinical course had been marked by seizures and episodes of mental confusion, recurrent acute tubular necrosis, postoperative subcutaneous emphysema due to ruptured pulmonary blebs, and sudden congestive heart failure due to a fractured mitral-valve prosthesis (which necessitated emergency replacement of the prosthetic left ventricle on the 13th postoperative day).Since . . .