It's Okay To Be Smart

How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart

Fourteen hours earlier, I’d watched doctors lift Meeko’s heart from his body and place it, still beating, in a plastic dish. He looked no worse for the experience, whisking away a fly with his tail as he nibbled, demonstrably alive—though above his head, a monitor showed a flatlined pulse. I held a stethoscope to his warm, fragrant flank and heard, instead of the deep lub-dub of a heartbeat, what sounded like a dentist’s drill or the underwater whine of an outboard motor. Something was keeping Meeko alive, but it was nothing like a heart.

This is an INCREDIBLE piece of work. There are so many unbelievable pieces to this story of artificial hearts. First, these hearts don’t mimic the pumping that natural hearts create. Instead, the turbines that drive them have a whirring sound and push blood through the body continuously, leaving the recipient without a heartbeat.

Second, back in the TKTK, a former NASA engineer received a traditional heart transplant and happened to hear about the project to create artificial hearts. He convinced NASA to get involved, which gave the project funding. Serendipity wins again.

And then there’s the unbelievable discovery that not only do these machines help keep people alive, they actually reverse heart failure. Damage to the heart was considered permanent until a few years ago, but it looks like we were wrong about that. They can even attach these turbines to functioning hearts after a heart attack and remove them later when the heart has healed. Whoa.

The very thin line between man and machine in modern medicine has always fascinated me. Go read this. The things humans have figured out how to do will blow your mind.

Source: popsci.com