Word: ventricular
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that kept his heartbeat regular, in 1998, doctors had to apply an electrical current across his chest on three different occasions to get his heartbeat back to normal. But such interventions are routine; they are nothing like the drama-charged ER version. Those are applied only in cases of ventricular fibrillation--a type of irregular heartbeat that is different from the kind Bradley has and more dangerous because it occurs in the two chambers of the heart that do the actual pumping. Bradley's heart settled back into its normal rhythm last week even before he reached the hospital...
McCarthy has been more cautious than Batista and more research oriented. He picks only patients who are healthy enough to be on the transplant list, so that if the procedure does not work they can be put on a left-ventricular assist device, or artificial pump, until a suitable donor can be found. "We've had a 72% success rate with the procedure," says McCarthy. "If you look at all the people who die just waiting for a heart transplant, those odds are pretty good...
American surgeons like McCarthy have brought a level of scientific professionalism to Batista's procedure. To be sure, the greatest benefit of U.S. hospitals is the state-of-the-art postoperative care. American doctors also offer a safety net for patients by placing them on a left-ventricular assist device that helps the heart pump blood into the body if the procedure fails. In addition, McCarthy has somewhat changed the procedure. Where Batista does his work on a beating heart, McCarthy stops the heart so he can make cleaner cuts (a common practice in open-heart surgery...
...been a nurse for 11 years, and was a cardiac nurse at a San Diego hospital the night a technician allowed a patient who had just suffered a heart attack to get out of bed and smoke a cigarette. "All of a sudden the patient's heart monitor showed ventricular fibrillation, a life-threatening condition in which you can die within minutes," says Kranstover. "I rushed in to resuscitate him. He almost didn't make...
...Food and Drug Administration has approved the first commercial implantable blood pump to keep patients alive while they await heart transplants. Called the HeartMate implantable pneumatic left-ventricular assist system, the ashtray-sized device boosts the heart's main pumping chamber while the natural heart continues to perform other functions. Only 2,000 donor hearts become available each year, while more than 15,000 people may need transplants...