Man lives more than a year without heart

                        And we are not speaking in metaphors here


        
                  American Stan Larkin and his artificial heart.

The expression "you have no heart" just won a literal meaning: Stan Larkin, an American of 25 years, 555 days passed without the organ. As? With a portable artificial heart that pumped blood to your body 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - while waiting for a donor for the transplant, he was able to play basketball.

The robotic body, which replaces the truth, is called SynCardia, a mechanism developed by the University of Michigan in 2001. He has become popular since 2008, when the Medicare (kind of US SUS) began to cover the costs of surgery. The device of the engine is outside the body on the cardiovascular system via two pipes, pumping 9.5 liters of blood per minute. Despite being clumsy - are 6kg wire and metal - the SynCardia is thought to be practical: it can be loaded into the outlet or car, and comes with a backpack called Freedom, so that the person need not stay in bed all the time and can live with some autonomy. Of course, it is not that the patient will use the SynCardia a lifetime - the idea is that they serve as a bridge to transplantation. It works like this:

The artificial heart, however, is only indicated for patients who are really ill, and can not wait a single day longer for a transplant - exactly the case of Stan and his older brother, Dominique. Still teenagers, they were diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease that can cause total cardiac arrest (and not only on one side of the heart, as is more common). In this situation, or a defibrillator decides then to Stan and Dominique, remained two alternatives: the artificial organ and the constant risk of death.

The brothers spent two years on the waiting list for a transplant - twice the US average - and put the SynCardia as a last resort. Dominique used the device only for a few weeks before receiving a heart of truth, but Stan was not so lucky: there were 555 days until a compatible donor. In a press conference, he said the worst part was not being able to carry his two young daughters on his lap and not to ride horse. But apart from that, he surprised doctors: he lived his life as normal (or as normal as possible while carrying a backpack 6kg plugged chest).

Stan is one of 1,500 people who received the SynCardia far in the United States. 79% of them, the robot heart worked well, and Larkin is the patient who got more time with the thing plugged in the chest. The discovery is important to help those who are on the waiting list for a heart in the USA.