Word: implantations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Within days of the implant, Schroeder was up, cracking jokes and drinking beer. But in less than three weeks, he suffered multiple strokes, a complication that has plagued three of the five permanent Jarvik-7 heart recipients. The seizures left him partly paralyzed, with impaired speech and memory. He recovered enough to move across the street from the hospital into a specially equipped apartment, where he lived with his wife and was attended by nurses and technicians. That idyll lasted barely a month before a second stroke. Again he fought back and eventually he was able to make a trip...
...ascribes it to "retrograde menstruation." Instead of flowing down through the cervix and vagina, some menstrual blood and tissue back up through the Fallopian tubes and spill out into the pelvic cavity (see chart). Normally this errant flow is harmlessly absorbed, but in some cases the stray tissue may implant itself outside the uterus and continue to grow. A second theory suggests that the disease arises from misplaced embryonic cells that have lain scattered around the abdominal cavity since birth. When the monthly hormonal cycles begin at puberty, says Dr. Howard Judd, director of gynecological endocrinology at UCLA Medical Center...
...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 the artificial heart, in its current form, is simply too crude and too risky to be widely used...
Drummond's stroke-caused crisis cast doubt on a new phase in the artificial heart program, one with a more limited and, to many, a more realistic goal: to use the mechanical device not as a permanent implant but only as a bridge, keeping a seriously ill heart patient alive until a human donor heart can be found. The Food and Drug Administration had authorized Copeland to use the Jarvik-7 for that purpose only a few weeks before, and has since granted permission to a handful of other surgeons. "We're not really doing this in an attempt...
...lessen the chances of clots after the five-hour implant operation, doctors gave Drummond low doses of heparin, an anticoagulant; they also lowered the air pressure that drives the mechanical heart to ensure a gentler blood flow and thus reduce the turbulence that damages red blood cells. Unfortunately, the strategy failed to work. But by week's end Drummond had a human heart and was in critical but stable condition...