science · 30 November 2001 · 23 years ago
In 2001, Robert Tools, 59, the first person in the world to receive a fully self-contained artificial heart, died in Louisville, Ky. Five months earlier, on 2 Jul 2001, doctors at Jewish Hospital in Louisville had implanted the AbioCor heart replacement. He died of internal bleeding and organ failure after living with the device whirring in his chest for 151 days. Doctors said the death was not caused by problems with the AbioCor heart device. They blamed the severe abdominal bleeding on long-standing health problems. Unlike earlier artificial hearts (such as the Jarvik-7) the AbioCor has no wires or tubes that stick out of the chest and connect to a big compressor. The battery-powered, plastic-and-titanium device is the size of a softball.
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