The Man Who Spent Five Weeks Without Heart!

Lewis suffered a heart infection caused by abnormal production of bad proteins (amyloidosis), a disease that would cause an inevitable death and that neither could have saved him a pacemaker. 

However, doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier-members of the Texas Heart Institute, proposed an innovative solution: replace the heart by a device called continuous flow(flow-through) , which allows blood to continue flowing patient with no pulse.

The patient’s condition worsened day by day, to the point that experts ended up giving only 12 hours old. Therefore, with the permission of the patient’s wife, doctors installed the unit in March 2011 , as published by National Public Radio. Had only been tested on animals.

The intervention was successful and the next day the patient was awake and talking . But unfortunately died at five weeks because of an underlying disease. A documentary that recalls the achievement of Cohn and Frazzier, was broadcast on Vimeo. 

Texas Heart – 5min. sample reel from Treva Wurmfeld on Vimeo.

Shortlink:

Posted by Paracha on February 10, 2012. Filed under Articles, Life Style, Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry