A 40-year-old woman became the world`s first female artificial heart patient Thursday, receiving a smaller version of the Jarvik-7 pump designed for her chest cavity, hospital officials said.
Mary Lund, of Kensington, Minn., underwent a second operation Thursday to remove fluid in her chest and was in critical but stable condition at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, doctors said.
Surgeons from the Minnesota Heart Institute, headed by Dr. Lyle Joyce, decided on the heart implant about midday Wednesday when it was determined Lund probably would not live through the night without immediate intervention, said Allen Yearick, a hospital administrator.
Dr. Fredarick Goebel, a cardiologist on the medical team, said Lund was in good health before an unknown virus began destroying her heart after a coldlike episode four or five days ago. The virus caused a rare condition called acute viral myocarditis, which affects the heart muscle.
Goebel said it would be weeks before Lund will be considered for a human heart transplant.
”The patient may continue to suffer from the rare viral illness, therefore she would not be a candidate for an immediate implantation (of a human heart),” he said. ”Surgeons are concerned the virus would attack any human heart.”
Lund was brought to the hospital in rapidly deteriorating condition Tuesday. Before implanting the Jarvik-7, physicians had no time to do the necessary laboratory work needed to determine what virus attacked her heart, Goebel said.
Joyce, who assisted Dr. William DeVries in the first total artificial heart implant in Dr. Barney Clark in 1982, used a smaller, 70-milliliter Jarvik-7 heart for Thursday`s operation because of the size of the woman`s chest cavity, Yearick said.
Doctors obtained special permission Wednesday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use the new device, which is 30 percent smaller than the original Jarvik-7. But the hospital only received approval to use the mechanical pump as ”a bridge” to keep the patient alive until a human heart could be transplanted, a spokesman said.
The 110-pound, 5-foot-4 patient works as a secretary at a nursing home in Alexandria, Minn., and has a 14-year-old son. Because of her grave condition, her husband, DuWayne, 45, signed a consent form for the implant, although Mrs. Lund agreed verbally to the operation.
Doctors tried all the standard drug therapies for a viral infection and all failed to help her, Goebel said. ”What happened to her is very, very rare,” he said.
Goebel said because of Lund`s rapid deterioration, the prognosis is uncertain and doctors will have ”to watch her closely.”
The four valves of the artificial heart were manufactured by Medtronic Inc., a Twin Cities firm. The valves, made of titanium and pyrolitic carbon, assure that the blood flows in the correct direction.
Lund becomes the world`s 12th artificial heart patient and the 8th to receive the Jarvik-7 device. One Penn State heart, one Phoenix heart and two models built at Texas Heart Institute were implanted into patients who have since died.
Five Jarvik-7`s were implanted permanently, and two of those patients are alive. The Minnesota woman is the third Jarvik-7 patient to receive the device as a bridge until a natural heart donor can be found.
Michael Drummond, 25, received a Jarvik-7 on a temporary basis Aug. 29, 1985, at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson. His mechanical pump was replaced with a natural heart nine days later, and he is still alive. Thomas Gaidosh, 47, received a Jarvik-7 bridge Oct. 24 at Presbyterian-University Hospital in Pittsburgh. Four days later, Gaidosh received a human heart that has kept him alive.
