Teen Gets New Heart After Using Mini Pump
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A blood-pumping device developed by a 96-year-old pioneering surgeon has allowed a teenage boy with a failing heart to survive the two months it took him to receive a transplant.
Travis Marcus, 14, became the first child to receive a new heart after using the miniature heart pump, called the DeBakey Child Ventricular Assist Device, Arkansas Children’s Hospital announced Thursday.
“Without the device he would have been dead. That’s the bottom line,” said Dr. Jonathan Drummond-Webb, who performed both surgeries.
Marcus, who was born with a congenital heart defect, received the four-ounce pump on Sept. 16 after spending days on a heart-lung bypass machine. The pump, roughly the size of a C-size household battery, allowed him to live until he could receive a donor heart on Nov. 11.
Nearly a month later, Marcus is recovering, joking with his doctors and watching football from his hospital room. His father, Rick, said there’s a “slim possibility” he could be home by Christmas.
The developer of the pump, Dr. Michael DeBakey, considered the father of modern cardiovascular surgery, met Marcus before the boy received the donor heart.
“A 14-year-old and a 96-year-old, they couldn’t really relate, but they talked,” Marcus’ mother, Shari, said Thursday. “(DeBakey) explained about the pump and how everything worked. He was wonderful.”
The DeBakey device, made of titanium and plastic, fits inside the patient’s chest and is powered by an external battery pack. It had been implanted in another child who did not survive.
DeBakey began working on the device in the 1980s after performing a heart transplant on a NASA engineer.
Other NASA engineers became interested in the project and contributed ideas on how an implantable heart pump might benefit from the principles used to pump fuel in the space shuttle.
DeBakey conducted clinical trials in Germany on an adult-size internal heart pump and later won approval for its use in Europe, where more than 240 devices have been implanted in adults.
A Houston company modified the device for children, and the U.S. government approved its use.