FRANCE: Promising artificial heart which could save thousands of lives goes into production in France

Record ID: 402104

  • Title: FRANCE: Promising artificial heart which could save thousands of lives goes into production in France
  • Date: 1st November 2009
  • Summary: VELIZY, FRANCE (OCTOBER 27, 2009) (REUTERS) LABORATORY WHERE HEART IS TO BE BUILT CUBICLE IN LAB MICROSCOPE WITH HEART GRAPHICS IN THE BACKGROUND ELECTRONIC COMPONENT MICROSCOPE AND COMPONENT GRAPHIC SHOWING ASSEMBLY OF HEART CARMAT EMPLOYEE SHOWING HEART SPATIAL FUNCTION HEART ON SCREEN MOVING HEART COMPONENT WHICH MONITORS BODY POSITION PROFESSOR ALAIN CARPENTI
  • Embargoed: 16th November 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Health,Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVA9L50YNS91XZM0UH9IYW59OMG5
  • Story Text: A promising artificial heart goes into production in France. The heart, said to be the most advanced so far, could help save thousands of lives in the coming years.
    Cardiac patients everywhere may soon benefit from a new artificial heart that does what none has succeeded in doing before, namely, mimicking closely the natural functions of the human heart.
    The company which manufactures the heart are starting the production of the hearts which are to be used in the first human patients by 2011.
    Developed by world-renowned French cardiac surgeon, Dr. Alain Carpentier, the heart has been successfully tested on animals and is now going to be assembled in a new laboratory outside Paris.
    Carpentier's artificial heart, wrapped in synthetic skin specially designed to keep the body from rejecting it, could help reduce the deadly gap between supply and demand for heart transplants.
    For Carpentier, it's the start of new episode and the term of many years of research and convincing:
    "You Know, in the life of a researcher there are two difficult moments. The first one is to conceive and to carry out the project, the prototype and to demonstrate that there is potential in its function in order to serve the human being. This stage finishes today and this new stage is the handover to another team, a team which will build it in an industrial way and will have the responsibility to build a product which will be able to be implanted in the human body," said Carpentier after discovering the new lab inaugurated on Tuesday (October 27).
    Artificial hearts have been developed before, but what makes Carpentier's heart unique and much closer to the real thing is its ability to measure the body's activity levels and change its pace accordingly thanks to the latest electronic sensor technology.
    The revolutionary sensor technology capable of almost perfectly regulating heart rate and blood flow according to the patient's needs comes from an unlikely source: European aerospace giant EADS engineers who use the electronic sensors in guided missiles.
    Following further development, the heart will be tested on patients whose lives are at risk and who have no other options for treatment.
    "We expect to have human implants starting with the clinical trials at the beginning of 2011" said Marcello Conviti the head of Carmat, the company which is to assemble the hearts.
    According to Marcello Conviti, 100,000 patients in western countries need a new heart. Only 5000 of them are lucky enough to have a real heart transplant.
    Conviti hopes that this new heart can someday save all of them:
    "We hope to save all these 95,000 but theoretically we could not say that, it depends on indications, it depends on our capability to train properly the clinical teams and the performance of the machine per say, but theoretically speaking, this is our target, of course we are here to try to save all of them" Conviti said on Tuesday (October 27).
    In term, it is hoped that the prosthetic replacement could do away with world-wide donor shortage forever.
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