Word: burcham
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...flurry of surgery marked an important transition in the use of artificial hearts. After the serious neurological complications in such earlier mechanical-heart recipients as Barney Clark, Jack Burcham and William Schroeder (who remains alive but brain-impaired after nearly 350 days with the Jarvik-7), the tide seems to be turning away from the use of artificial pumps as permanent fixtures. Instead, surgeons are beginning to implant them as emergency stopgap measures. This change of emphasis became apparent at a meeting in Washington last month attended by most of the world's leading implant surgeons. Several felt that...
Even before his implant surgery, Burcham had been experiencing kidney failure, a common complication of advanced heart disease. The stress of the back-to-back operations and the need for multiple transfusions aggravated the problem, and twice last week Burcham had to undergo dialysis. It was during the second treatment on Wednesday afternoon that a nurse, listening to Burcham's chest with a stethoscope, noticed that his breathing was labored in the left lung. X rays showed that a large amount of fluid had collected in his chest. Doctors later learned that the fluid was blood that had congealed into...
...usual signs. By the time a sudden drop in blood pressure alerted doctors to the danger, said DeVries, lifesaving efforts "were doomed to failure." The surgeon was summoned to the hospital from downtown Louisville, where he was attending a conference on heart replacement, but he arrived too late: Burcham had already stopped breathing and had no blood pressure. "I was there for about 15 minutes, 20 minutes," DeVries said, "before we turned the key (to the Jarvik-7 power unit...
...Burcham's rapid decline and death are the latest in a series of disappointments and unforeseen disasters that have plagued the artificial- heart program. Both Clark and Schroeder, who is now living in a specially equipped apartment across the street from the hospital, suffered serious neurological problems that left them mentally impaired. Haydon, who was hailed two months ago at the time of surgery as the best implant candidate of all, has yet to be weaned from a respirator. At the Louisville conference, DeVries for the first time publicly presented his most recent findings on the array of complications associated...
...Burcham's death has shown, one of the most vexing problems in implant patients is bleeding. The loss of blood is especially hard to manage, DeVries noted, because patients face the equal and opposite threat of too much clotting. (Blood clots forming in the vicinity of the artificial heart are suspected of having caused Schroeder's strokes.) Said DeVries: "The tightrope that we walk between over- and undercoagulation will have to be examined again a little closer...