The latest. I think it would be really weird to not have a heartbeat. I hope that they can further improve on the reciprocating ones, rather than continuous flow.
[Update a few minutes later]
Or is this the future? Printable organs will eliminate need for transplants and donors. Also the need for anti-rejection drugs.
Which reminds me: There was a silly article the other day on how self-driving cars will dry up the supply for organ donors. I have this crazy idea that there’s a better solution to the donor problem than relying on random traffic tragedies.
There was a silly article the other day on how self-driving cars will dry up the supply for organ donors.
I’ve heard similar arguments against motorcycle helmet laws.
You can always go the route that Larry Niven wrote about (for those who aren’t familiar with Niven’s Known Space books, he postulates a world where the death penalty supplies the organ banks, the black market is supplied by “organleggers”, and the government extends the death penalty to people with too many traffic tickets).
So modern day China.
Anyone who’s signed their organ donor card is fair game.
I agree that continuous flow seems inherently more reliable than heart-like pumps. If I needed an artificial heart, I’d be willing to give up the beat in exchange for a smaller chance of failure.
It would be a simple thing to add a “thumper” to a constant flow artificial heart, just to give the feeling of a heartbeat.
Like the motor that makes cell phones vibrate, yeah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF5Sp9ibQV0
Well, Monty Python was there first. “There just aren’t enough accidents. It’s unethical and time consuming to go out and cause them…”
The evidence is that you don’t need a heartbeat. There are a couple of people that had Left Ventricle Assist Device (like Dick Cheney had before his transplant) that had their hearts effectively fail and still were able to live. The continuous flow versions have only one moving part, the magnetically suspended impeller. One of the companies involved in this has had one of those pumps running for over 5 years non-stop.
As for printing a heart, the more likely scenario is to grow a new one on a pig heart scaffold. http://www.nature.com/news/tissue-engineering-how-to-build-a-heart-1.13327
They have done this in cows – grew one from stem cells, put it in, it started beating. Human trials expected in a few years.
Hearts have fairly complicated wiring systems, so I doubt this thing was beating very naturally or productively.
Actually, it was beating. A pacemaker would be needed.
It would need more than a simple pacemaker. It would need a blanket of electrodes to stimulate the various parts of the heart to contract in the proper sequence. In a natural heart the cardiac conduction system carries signals that coordinate this sequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conduction_system_of_the_heart