According to iTélé, the French company would have chosen to stop the current trial while it was time to understand the reasons for the stoppage of the first artificial heart.
While the JDD revealed Sunday morning that the death of the first patient to have received an artificial heart transplant was due to a short circuit, another information has just been added to this story already full of twists and turns. According to iTélé, Carmat, the company behind the total bioprosthetic artificial heart, would have chosen to suspend the current trial until the causes of the short-circuit have been discovered.
In an interview with Sunday Newspaper and published on Sunday March 16, Professor Alain Carpentier, the father of the artificial heart, explained that “the heart suddenly stopped. There was a short circuit. This resulted in cardiac arrest identical to that which can be seen in a pathological natural heart. ”
The reasons for this “electronic problem” have however not yet been discovered according to the professor, but “the engineers of Carmat […] work on it day and night to figure it out. They will find ”. Pending more information, the trials will therefore be suspended. Three other patients were supposed to be operated on soon. For the moment, Carmat has not confirmed iTélé’s information and has not specified the situation of these 3 patients awaiting an artificial heart transplant.
The culmination of 25 years of research, this prosthesis could ultimately constitute an alternative to heart transplants. Alain Carpentier had also wanted to confirm at JDD that he considered this first attempt to be a success for science and medicine. “For 74 days, this patient did not show any cerebral deficiency, the check of the heart after the death and the autopsy confirmed it: there was not the slightest clot, neither in the prosthesis, nor in the circulation. . In this sense the trial is a success. ”
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