Sunday March 2, 75 days after his Carmat artificial heart transplant, the first transplant patient died.
“Seventy-five days after the implantation of the first CARMAT bioprosthetic artificial heart in a 76-year-old man suffering from end-stage heart failure, the patient died on March 2, 2014” »Announced in a press release the Georges Pompidou Hospital. Doctors specify that “the causes can only be known after a thorough analysis of the many medical and technical data recorded.”
A world premiere
The doctors concerned by this medical experience highlight in this press release the importance of the first lessons they were able to draw from this first clinical trial, concerning the selection of the patient, the follow-up postoperative, treatment and prevention of the difficulties encountered. This is not a failure for the medical team who performed the transplant since they initially hoped for a survival period of 1 month. However, the patient has greatly exceeded this period, living with the artificial heart for almost 2 and a half months.
This operation was a world first. “This innovative technology could ultimately constitute a valuable alternative to heart transplantation, too rarely available for the millions of people withheart failure in the world “, explained the Assistance Publique-Hôpital de Paris (AP-HP).
The heart of the Carmat company is a real hope for patients who suffer from heart failure. Indeed, this cardiovascular disorder puts the heart in the inability to contract enough to send the volume of blood sufficient to supply the whole organism. People who suffer from it are constantly short of breath, tired and sometimes need to be hospitalized. In France, heart failure is responsible for more than 32,000 deaths each year.
Three other patients should be operated in order to complete the first phase of the clinical trial, the success of which will be evaluated in particular by the survival rate at one month or the conduct of the patient towards transplantation s ‘he is in condition of eligibility “, explained Carmat during the authorization to carry out the implantation issued by the Medication Safety Agency (ANSM), on 24 last September.
