Word: implants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Just two weeks after the implant of his artificial heart, William Schroeder was hoping to get out of the hospital in Louisville in time for Christmas. "My criteria for success is what I got right now," he confidently told two reporters standing near his bed. "I only had about 40 days to live. With this new heart I feel I have ten years." But last Thursday evening, as Schroeder sat in a chair eating dinner, his wife Margaret became alarmed when he abruptly froze and then fell unconscious. He had suffered what doctors at Humana Hospital Audubon called a "small...
...doctors varied the rate of the heartbeat, at one point lowering it to 30 beats per min. (75 is customary for Schroeder), leaving him weak and short of breath and looking exactly as he did before the implant. The other experiment was also uncomfortable: to measure his lungs' output, a tight-fitting mask was placed over his nose and mouth. The test was expected to last 45 min. but took 1½ hr. "He was very upset about that but still cooperated with us," said DeVries, adding, "He kind of told me off." Though Schroeder agreed to the tests...
Controversy continues to swirl about the implant. Los Angeles Internist David Olch, a member of the American Medical Association's judicial council, which proposed guidelines for the replacement of failing organs, issued a scathing criticism of the Humana hospital chain in last week's American Medical News. Asked Olch: "Will the artificial heart benefit Schroeder as much as it benefits [Designer Robert] Jarvik, Humana and the surgical team?" Responded Dr. Allan Lansing, medical director of the Louisville hospital's heart institute: "Business in the health industry has been criticized for not supporting research. Now they...
Recently, Fineberg criticized the decision to perform the second-ever artificial heart implant, at Humana Hospital in Kentucky last month, because the procedure is still highly experimental and the hospital's resources could have been used for more established procedures such as valve replacements...
There is no question that Humana's financing will give the field of heart-implant research a major boost. Federal health care officials welcomed the company's plans. Said Carolyne Davis, chief of the Health Care Financing Administration, which directs the Medicare and Medicaid programs: "Given the country's limited health care dollars, it is important that we have medical research done in the private as well as the public sector...