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Successful heart transplant after using experimental artificial heart
The SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, at left, and a human heart, at right. Credit: Image courtesy of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences
A petite 44-year-old woman has received a successful heart transplant at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, thanks to an experimental Total Artificial Heart designed for smaller patients.
The UCLA patient is the first person in California to receive the smaller Total Artificial Heart, and the first patient in the world with the device to be bridged to a successful heart transplant -- that is, to go from needing a transplant to receiving one.
The 50cc SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart is a smaller investigational version of the larger 70cc SynCardia heart, which was approved for use in people awaiting a transplant by the Federal Food and Drug Administration in 2004 and has been used by more than 1,440 patients worldwide.
The 50cc device is designed to be used by smaller patients -- including most women, some men and many adolescents -- with end-stage biventricular heart failure, where both sides of the heart are failing to pump enough blood to sustain the body. The device provides mechanical support until a donor heart can be found.
Nemah Kahala, a wife and mother of five, was transferred to UCLA from Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in March. She was suffering from restrictive heart muscle disease and in critical condition. Her heart failure was so advanced that repair surgery and other mechanical assist devices could not help.
Kahala was placed on a life support system called extra corporal membrane oxygenation, but this only works for about 10 days before a person's organs begin to deteriorate.
With the clock ticking, doctors needed to buy time by replacing Kahala's failing heart with an artificial heart while she waited for a heart transplant. Her chest cavity was too small for her to receive the larger 70cc artificial heart. However, under a one-time emergency use permitted under FDA guidelines, her doctors were able to implant the experimental 50cc device.
"Mrs. Kahala's condition was deteriorating so rapidly that she would have not survived while waiting for a transplant," said her surgeon, Dr. Abbas Ardehali, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the UCLA Heart and Lung Transplant Program. "We were grateful to have this experimental technology available to save her life and help bridge her to a donor heart."
The artificial heart provides an immediate and safe flow of blood to help vital organs recover faster and make patients better transplant candidates.
After the two-hour surgery to implant the artificial heart, Kahala remained hospitalized in the intensive care unit and eventually began daily physical therapy to help make her stronger for transplant surgery.
Two weeks after the total artificial heart surgery, she was strong enough to be placed on the heart transplant list. After a week of waiting, a donor heart was found.
"In addition to the high-tech medicine that kept her alive, Mrs. Kahala and her family have exemplified how a solid support system that includes loved ones and a compassionate medical team practicing what we at UCLA have termed 'Relational Medicine' plays an important role in surviving a medical crisis," said Dr. Mario Deng, professor of medicine and medical director of the Advanced Heart Failure, Mechanical Support and Heart Transplant program at UCLA.
Kahala was discharged from UCLA on April 18. She is grateful to be home in Riverside with her family, who own a grocery store in the city of Orange.
Since 2012, the UCLA Heart Transplant Program has implanted eight 70cc SynCardia Total Artificial Hearts. UCLA also participated in the clinical study of a 13.5-pound Freedom portable driver -- a backpack-sized device that powers the artificial heart, allowing the patient to leave the hospital -- that received FDA approval on June 26, 2014.
The FDA cautions that in the United States, the 50cc SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart is an investigational device, limited by United States law to investigational use.
The 50cc TAH is in a FDA-approved clinical study. UCLA plans to begin enrolling patients in the study in the near future.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Health Sciences. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150701140901.htm
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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