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World's First Fully Artificial Heart Only a Couple of Years Away

by Terrence O'Brien on October 29, 2008 at 07:02 AM

World's First Artificial Heart Only a Few Years AwayAlain Carpentier, head of a European research team that developed the first artificial heart, believes his team's implantable artificial heart will be able to enter clinical trials by 2011. "After 15 years of work, we are handing over to industry to produce an artificial heart," he told the Daily Mail.

The prototype is shaped like a real heart and made from chemically treated animal tissue to avoid rejection by the recipient's body. Waiting lists for heart transplants are long, and the number of actual donors is incredibly small. This could give heart attack victims and older heart failure patients a viable option if they've been turned down for a transplant, or if one is simply unavailable.

Until now, the artificial heart has only been tested on animals and in computer simulations. Soon, however, it may finally get its test run inside a human body, and bring us one step closer to becoming the Six Million Dollar Man. [From: Daily Mail]

Tags: artificial heart, ArtificialHeart, health, medicine, science

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