The Jarvik 7 Heart Today

Since its debut, the Jarvik 7 Total Artificial Heart has become more used as a temporary substitute for those patients that are awaiting a heart transplant. Since the first implant in 1982, the Jarvik 7 has been used in more than three hundred and fifty patients and is still in use today. The Jarvik 7 patients had an average life expectancy of days to weeks before they received the Jarvik 7. After receiving the artificial heart, the patients lived an average of ten months, but the rate of complication was high. Due to this complication rate, the media only reported on the heart’s failures and not its successes. “"That's where the press stopped doing research and checking facts and instead began to publish mistake after mistake after mistake," Dr. Jarvik notes” [4] While the media was reporting falsities, the doctors working with the Jarvik 7 were able to better familiarize themselves with the device and so were able to better assist patients who needed this heart. Dr. Jarvik stated, “Very rarely did I receive a phone call to check the facts. For example, the press wrote repeatedly that Dr. Clark [the first recipient of the Jarvik 7 artificial heart] died of a stroke. In fact, he never had a stroke at all. The press wrote over and over that the console a patient needed to power the heart was 'as large as a refrigerator.' In fact, the home console is about half that size, but more significantly — the portable power system was only the size of a briefcase" [4]. Dr. Jarvik also said the “press also wrote that the Jarvik 7 heart caused a high rate of strokes and infections. The press didn't notice that as more cases were done, these rates plummeted, yet the device was the same. So the device alone was never responsible for the earlier complications. Rather, doctors needed to learn how to manage their patients more effectively: That is the point of such research in the first place” [4]. The most incorrect of all of these statements however, is the one that says that the Jarvik 7 heart was a failure. The Jarvik 7 artificial heart has had the highest success rate of any total artificial heart or heart assist device in the history of such devices [4]. The heart is now available in the United States, Canada, Germany , and France under its new ownership and renamed the CardioWest total artificial heart [4].

Picture of Jarvik 7 heart courtesy of http://www.medicineandbiotech.com/
Information courtesy of
[4] http://www.jarvikheart.com/basic.asp?id=69