After five months of hospitalization and four months at home, the adventure of the artificial heart came to an end for the second patient. He passed away on May 2.
For the second beneficiary of the artificial heart, the adventure lasted nine months. He died on May 2, announces the manufacturer Carmat. Hospitalized the day before because of circulatory failure, the 69-year-old man died during the implantation of a second prosthesis.
The second patient received his prosthesis on August 5, 2014. After five months of hospital follow-up, he was able to return home. “I went back 30 years,” he was delighted then. But the adventure ended in the intensive care unit of the Nantes University Hospital (Loire-Atlantique). A “functional drift of the prosthesis” resulted in circulatory failure, Carmat reports in a press release. On May 2, the medical team decided to implant a second prosthesis. The operation is a success. But “post-operative poly-visceral” complications lead to the death of the man.
“We join in the pain of the relatives of the patient and wish to pay tribute to the latter who lived almost nine months with his cardiac prosthesis, leading an almost normal life with his family”, declares the General Manager of Carmat, Marcello Conviti.
Doctors and engineers will now analyze the data from the second heart. They should make it possible to identify the causes of death and improve the safety of the third patient, implanted at the end of April as part of the clinical feasibility trial.
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