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The Pros And Cons Of The Artificial Heart

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The Pros And Cons Of The Artificial Heart
The first artificial heart for humans was invented in the 1950s, but it wasn't until 1982 that a working artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, was successfully implanted in a human patient. Your heart is the engine inside your body that keeps everything running, the heart is a muscular pump that Like any engine, if the heart is not well taken care of it can break down and pump less efficiently, a condition called heart failure, which runs oxygen and blood through your lungs and body. In a day, your heart pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood. Until recently, the only option for many severe heart failure patients has been heart transplants. Today, the most common artificial heart is the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart, accounting for 96% of all artificial heart transplants. And it doesn't come cheap, with a price tag of around $125,000. …show more content…
The artificial heart is not without risk, and those risks include wearing out or failure of the electrical motor, infection, and the need to take blood thinners to prevent clotting. Stroke and bleeding are also possible complications with the artificial heart. Another disadvantage of the artificial heart is that not all patients have a body size that allows the device to be implanted into the chest cavity, making small persons unable to receive the

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