Today in Technology History
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December 3
You may have heard the news on Friday of the death of Robert Tools. He was the first person to have his own heart replaced with an artificial heart that was totally implantable -- that is, the entire heart, including its power source, was in the patient's body.
Today's date marks the anniversary of two other heart-related medical breakthroughs.
In 1967, a South African doctor, Christiaan Barnard, performed the world's first human heart transplant on December 3. The patient was a dentist in his 50s, Louis Washkansky. Dr. Barnard, who had tested such operations on animals, replaced Washkansky's failing heart with that of a young woman killed in a car crash. Washkansky was given drugs to keep his immune system from rejecting the new heart, but those drugs left him susceptible to pneumonia which killed him 18 days after the surgery.
In 1982, another dentist (this one in his 60s) became the first human recipient of a permanent artificial heart. All previous artificial hearts were temporary, inserted just to tide over a patient awaiting a real heart.
But Barney Clark knew that he would live out his days with the permanent "Jarvik-7" artificial heart. Clark's respirator was removed on December 3, one day after the artificial heart was implanted.
The dentist lived for 112 days with the Jarvik-7 (invented by Dr. Robert Jarvik and inserted by Dr. William DeVries). But because the Jarvik-7 was a big machine, Clark was never really mobile after the operation and he never left the hospital. Robert Tools, who lived with his artificial heart for almost five months until his death last week, was able to lead much more of a normal life.
Related links:
Click here to read Friday's obituary for Robert Tools.
Click here and here to read about the first heart transplant surgery and Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who died a few months ago.
Click here and here to read about Barney Clark and his artificial heart.
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