• What is artificial heart?
☆ It is a device which can replace original heart of humans. Its main purpose is circulation of blood until heart transplantation occurs. But in many cases when heart transplantation is not possible this artificial heart is used as permanent heart.
• In this generation it is very common to hear about organ transplantation and we all have many informations about it and because of this non medical students are not much interested about this . But these case is about an organ which is present inside the body of the patient.
• We have a special case about a women who is carrying her heart outside her body. Isn't it interesting?
• Selwa Hussain, she is a 39 years old women from Britain, who gone through a life saving operation . She is a mother of two children and the carry her heart in her rucksack. This whole incident started when she was facing difficulty in breathing, she drove 200 yards to see her family doctor in ClayHall, Essex. Then she was sent to a local hospital where she came to know that she is suffering from severe heart failure.
• It was not possible to for her to survive on a pump for her failing heart nor a heart transplantation because she was too weak for these treatments. Finally, Selwa’s natural heart was removed by surgeons and replaced with an artificial implant and the specialist unit on her back.
How her artificial heart works?
• Inside Selwa’s 15lb backpack are batteries, an electric motor and a pump that pushes air through tubes to power plastic chambers in her chest which push blood around her body.
Her backpack contains two sets of batteries to power the motor and she has a second unit on standby in another backpack should the first fail. It drives blood round her body at 138 beats per minute in a rhythm which causes her chest to vibrate. There is a constant pumping and whirring noise from the motor in the backpack that she wears when she goes out or leaves on the floor when at home.
The two large plastic tubes connected to the backpack enter her body through her tummy button and travel up to her chest. They then fill two balloons inside her chest cavity with air, which work like the chambers of a real heart to push blood round her body.
• She need a carer who will remain present 24×7 so that if any disaster strikes, they have 90 seconds to connect her to the back-up machine. Selwa, mother to a boy aged five and an 18-month-old girl, said: ‘I was so ill before and after the surgery that it has taken me all this time to get fit enough to come home.’
What is the price of the artificial heart?
• The £86,000 artificial heart ,made by an American company and was fitted during a six-hour operation performed by surgeon Diana Garcia Saez, and assisted by Harefield’s head of transplantation surgery, Mr Andre Simon. Harefield is the only UK centre using the device.
• These cases proves us that the future of science and specially medicine is very bright. Artificial technology is not as comfortable as a natural process which is obvious but these technologies are saving millions of lives all over the world .
• Will power also plays a very crucial role in these cases . If Selwa had loose her will power she may not be alive today .
• These cases will alway give a new excitement to students that there are still many inventions are remaining which will change the future completely because where there is a will there is a way . Perhaps tomorrow if not today.
• So yes with the help of medical treatment we can survive on artificial heart which is present
- MOUSMI SHRIVASTAVA
Amazing information!
ReplyDeleteWow...I never knew this !!๐๐
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