Norwegian parts are key to getting a new type of mechanical, artificial heart to work reliably. The heart is made by the French company carmat and will be tested on humans on a large scale in France.
pressure sensor is produced by the Norwegian department of the company Memscap on Skoppum. “The inside” are silicon chips made by SINTEF’s lab in Trondheim.
On Mars – and in the body
– We have long collaborated with Memscap to create pressure sensor for altimeters in the aircraft industry. But it turned out that it can be used much. In fact, it was also used by NASA in the vessel that was sent to Mars for two and a half years ago. Now the sensors control the pressure in artificial hearts, says researcher Fabrice Lapique at SINTEF.
Dikretør January Hallenstvedt in Memscap on Skoppum stresses that reliability is a key word. – Both the aircraft and the human body needs to know that the sensor is standard and does not fail, he says to the popular science website gemini.no.
The Norwegian sensors have gained a good reputation internationally as extremely stable and reliable.Hoping for EU approval in 2015
In September carmat green light by the French health authorities to test the first artificial hearts in humans, four patients in three French hospitals.
Earlier this year, the makniske, artificial hearts tested at centers in Belgium, Poland, Slovenia and Saudi Arabia.
The French company hopes to end the trial of the artificial heart in humans by the end of next year and achieve common approval for use in the EU in early 2015, iiølge told Reuters.
– Mechanical artificial hearts, “total artificial heart” (TAH) has been in use for many years, says Arnt E. Fiane, acting department head and section head of pulmonary and cardiac surgery at Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet.
Much prestige
– There’s a lot of prestige in the launch of new models of mechanical, artificial hearts – not least, there is much publicity about just this heart because the renowned French cardiac specialist Alain Carpentier is behind the development of the said Fiane.
– Is this heart with his Norwegian-produced pressure sensor better than other models?
– I can not answer until I have set myself more detail into it and until it is more tested. As far as I know, there are at least four different, new artificial hearts and internationally is the starting block for testing on humans.
Americans first out
The first models of the so-called “total artificial heart” came for more than 20 years ago. The artificial heart from SynCardia, which is approved for general use in the USA, are implanted in more than 1,250 patients and has been tested in a ten-year clinical trial in America.
79 percent of terminally ill patients used the artificial heart as a “bridge” to heart transplantation with a donor heart. The results appropriately selected patients is good.More like a real heart
– It happens all the time enhancements. The new artificial hearts are smaller and more durable. They resemble more and more of a normal heart, the less risk of infection and blood clots, and patients live a better functioning. An important point is that the new types also require less energy, says Fiane.
– But still the new models depending on the supply of energy through the skin by an external battery pack. These have now been fairly large. Patients must go with them in a trolley .
artificial hearts, longer queue
The moment you manage to create an artificial implantable heart where you have to supply energy in the wires through the skin, the patient is a far greater freedom, and the mechanical hearts can be a real alternative to donor hearts. – But, says Fiane:
– that more people are surviving and can not wait to get a donor heart, does not create greater access to donor hearts. It just increases the queue.
– In Norway, we are fortunately well biased with donor hearts and have not yet seen the need to invest in artificial mechanical hearts of this type.
mechanical booster pumps
other hand, several Norwegian patients have been operated in a so-called VAD – a mechanical, internal support pump for use on both left and right side of the heart, which can help sick hearts to accomplish his work.
So far the indication in Norway for supporting these pumps just been like “bridges” to transplantation, to buy time. But it now appears that also in Norway is allowed to use such pumps in a smaller number as an alternative to heart transplantation and for permanent use under close surveillance, said Fiane.
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