Artificial Heart Gives New Hope to Patients

PARIS, Oct. 29, 2008 — -- A team of French researchers has developed an artificial heart that resembles and beats almost exactly like the real thing.

The news is providing renewed hope to hundreds of thousands of patients who suffer from heart failure and for whom standard drug therapy, ventricular assistance or a heart transplant have failed or aren't possible.

The team, led by Dr Alain Carpentier, a renowned French heart surgeon, presented a prototype of the artificial heart during a press conference Monday in Paris. Carpentier has been working on this project for the past 15 years.

"This new total artificial heart is a first, because it is made of biosynthetic tissues," Patrick Coulombier, deputy managing director of Carmat, the biomedical company that developed the heart, told ABCnews.com. These materials, made from animal tissue, are less likely to be rejected by the human body.

Carmat was founded by Carpentier and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, or EADS, which develops and markets civil and military aircraft as well as missiles, space rockets and satellites. The company plans to make 15 of these new artificial hearts. The first human trials are expected to start in two to three years.

Since the 1980s, several artificial heart projects have been put forward, most of them ventricular substitutes installed while the patient waited for a heart transplant. But none of these seem to have succeeded in resolving most complex long-term problems, such as infections and above all, the blood clots.

The French team hopes its device can work without clots forming.

"The risks of blood clots are limited with this new artificial heart because of the use of biosynthetic tissues," Coulombier explained. These tissues were first invented by Carpentier more than 30 years ago for cardiac valve prostheses, which are sold today all around the world and are made from animal tissues chemically treated to prevent human immune systems from rejecting the heart.

"Also, the smooth shape of the internal ventricles allows a complete and rapid wash of these ventricles in order to avoid having stagnant blood in some areas of the heart and thus the formation of blood clots," Coulombier added.