 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
 TAMPA, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Five million Americans suffer from debilitating, even deadly, heart failure. Recently the FDA approved a new device that could buy the most critical patients more time while they wait for a heart transplant. This technology may have even broader implications for patients who are out of options.
Bob Dewitt says doctors took one look at his heart and gave him a death sentence.
Text Continues Below
"They didn't think I'd live for another six to twelve hours," he recalled to Ivanhoe.
He had end stage heart failure and needed a heart transplant, but time was running out.
"My left side wasn't pumping and I was just completely dying," Dewitt said.
"We've been very limited in how to treat people effectively with congestive heart failure -- how to extend their lives," Cedric Sheffield, M.D., a cardiothoracic surgeon at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Fla., told Ivanhoe.
 Dr. Sheffield offered Dewitt something different. As part of a clinical trial, doctors implanted the HeartMate II -- a ventricular assistive device. It combines an internal pump with an external computer, designed to do the work Dewitt's failing heart couldn't.
"It's pumping the blood to all of the organs and that decreases the stress on the heart," Dr. Sheffield explained.
The device serves as a bridge for people waiting for a transplant. It's also being tested as a last resort for people who are too sick to have a transplant.
"That is I think the holy grail of this entire field -- to have an engineering solution, a mechanical circulatory support, that is equal to or better than heart transplantation for a very large population," Dr. Sheffield said.
More than a year after doctors implanted the device, Dewitt back at work, feeling better than he has in years.
"There's no actual sensation of any kind," Dewitt described. "There's absolutely nothing that I can tell that it's in there."
 It's designed to last up to ten years and Dewitt is grateful for every moment.
According to the National Institutes of Health congestive heart failure causes 300,000 deaths every year. Doctors say it's one of the most expensive conditions to treat.
For additional research on this article, click here.
To read Ivanhoe's full-length interview with Dr. Sheffield, click here.
Sign up for a free weekly e-mail on Medical Breakthroughs called First to Know by clicking here.
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Melissa Medalie at mmedalie@ivanhoe.com.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Ellen Fiss, Public Relations Manager
Tampa General Hospital
(813) 844-6397
efiss@tgh.org
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
|
.gif)
