Word: heartfully
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...developers say the new heart is the closest thing yet to the human body's natural ticker. Independent experts agree that it offers several significant improvements over what's currently available. The new device employs two pumps, instead of one, more accurately mimicking the function of a real heart's two ventricles, as well as a system of miniature sensors that react to physical activity and automatically increase or decrease the heart rate and blood pressure. The prosthesis also uses new composite bio-tech materials, which are made from animal tissue and chemically treated to eliminate the risk of blood...
Most earlier mechanical hearts - such as the seminal Jarvik 7 and other ventricular assist devices - were not designed to replace diseased hearts entirely, but to assist impaired function and bridge heart patients to transplant. Other total artificial hearts, meanwhile, such as the U.S.-developed AbioCor and a prototype being tested by MagScrew, have not successfully modulated beating and pulse according to the physical needs of the host...
...That physiological feedback capacity would mark a major step forward, probably allowing patients to live more normally than in the past," says Dr. Timothy Gardner, president of the American Heart Association, of the new French device...
Working with the European Aeronautics Defense & Space (EADS) - best known as the maker of the Airbus jet - French researchers have developed a pioneering new artificial heart. Dr. Alain Carpentier, the heart surgeon who led the development of the device, said that the first heart patients may receive the experimental organ in just three years...
...This attempt to permanently replace the physiological heart with a completely new artificial heart has been the Holy Grail of researchers," says Dr. Peter Weissberg, the British Heart Foundation's medical director, who was not involved with creating the new device. "The question now is whether it can prove as durable as the natural heart by beating 60 to 100 times per minute for life...