Word: balloon
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...conglomerate companies like Gulf & Western Industries, such mergers have had spectacular results. Under Chairman Charles Bluhdorn, Gulf & Western, which a decade ago was an ailing Houston auto-parts company, has gobbled up one company after another (among them: Paramount Pictures, New Jersey Zinc) to balloon into a $1 bil-lion-a-year operation. A pioneer in the conglomerate-building field, Los Angeles' Litton Industries, which was started almost from scratch by Chairman Charles B. ("Tex") Thornton (TIME cover, Oct. 4, 1963) and President Roy Ash in 1953, is still building. Last week, Litton (1966 sales: $1.2 billion) arranged...
Maimonides, fortunately, is one of the world's leading centers for research in artificial heart aids. Last year its heart specialists pioneered in implanting temporary plastic ventricles (TIME, June 3, 1966). This time Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz and his colleagues had a new and simpler idea: to put a balloon in the aorta and make it serve as a pump. The balloon had an added attraction. It does not require major chest surgery on an already weakened patient...
Pumping on Signal. Surgeons injected a local anesthetic into the patient's thigh and cut into the femoral artery. They then threaded a flexible plastic tube up the artery and the aorta until a deflated balloon at its end was about level with the heart (see diagram). The outside end of the tube led to an electrically operated pump filled with nonflammable, nonexplosive helium. The patient was connected to an electrocardiograph, whose signals could control the pump...
...With the balloon in place, the ECG signals were fed into a relay to regulate the pump's timing. When the patient's left ventricle contracted naturally, it sent a modest amount of blood into the aorta, but under insufficient pressure. A fraction of a second later, when her aortic valve had closed, the ECG signal made the pump fill the balloon with helium. This forced the blood in the aorta not only up and down, but also back to the roots of the coronary arteries, thus increasing the oxygen supply to the heart muscle. Meanwhile the ventricle...
...doctors kept the woman patient on the balloon pump for seven hours, during which her color improved and her skin became warm and dry. Then they removed the balloon. Since then, her heart has performed adequately on its own. Further recovery has been as normal as that of other heart attack victims, and last week, six weeks after the operation, her doctors were considering a date to send her home...