The artificial heart was developed in 1966 in the laboratory of Dr. Michael DeBakey at Baylor.
Funds from the National Heart Institute were used for its creation.
The device was made of plastic fiber and dacron, a type of man-made polyester.
The item weighed 227 grams and was attached by several plastic tubes to a control console at the head of the patient’s bed.
It was devised by Doctor Domingo Liotta.
It was named the Liotta-Coole Artificial Heart, after its inventor and the surgeon who implanted it, Dr. Denton Cooley.
The surgery took place on April 4, 1969 at the San Lucas clinic in Houston, United States.
The person who received that heart was a 47-year-old man named Haskell Karp.
It was a patient who had suffered heart failure and suffered several heart attacks.
Cooley’s idea was for the mechanical heart to keep Karp alive until he found a human heart to transplant into him.
Therefore, it was more of a “bridge” heart.
The operation went well, and the artificial heart kept Haskell alive for three days, until a human heart became available for transplantation.
Unfortunately, he could not survive this new operation and died two days later from complications.
This transplant was not without controversy.
Public opinion accused Dr. Coololey of violating federal guidelines on human experimentation by implanting the device before its efficacy had been proven in animals.
Cooley defended himself by arguing that it was a case of life and death since the patient urgently needed some kind of solution.
Since then, the use of artificial hearts has made great strides.
For example, in 982 an artificial heart called the “Jarvik 7” was implanted in a dentist named Barney Clark.
The man survived for 112 days on it, but suffered severe side effects and died from complications.
The longest survivor with the Jarvik-7 was William Schroeder, who lived to 6,320 days thanks to the beating of this heart.
The story is also news. Radio Profile. Voiceover by Pita Fortín and screenplay by Sebastián Rojas.