VIDEO. Artificial heart: "I went back 30 years!"

The second patient, transplanted with an artificial Carmat heart on August 5, testifies to his new life since the operation.

“When I arrived at the hospital on the day of the operation, I thought that if nothing was done, I would not see the end of the year. My heart was gasping for air. This is how the 2nd patient transplanted with a CARMAT artificial heart describes his life before the operation. 5 months later, he was able to return home on January 2 in good health. “Every day I cycle or walk”. It’s simple, he said to his GP: “I went back 30 years! “

For Professor Aalin Carpentier, the designer of the artificial heart, it is a real emotion to be around a patient who is doing so well: “It was a moving experience for the doctor that I am, used to working with patients suffering from heart failure. This disease, at an advanced stage, is having disproportionately swollen legs, not being able to hold a long conversation, or take more than five steps without shortness of breath. Five months after his operation, I discovered a man who works better than me! “, he declares in The Parisian.

The second patient implanted with the artificial heart at the Nantes University Hospital in the company of Prof. Alain Carpentier. Credit: pourquoidocteur.com and Les productions du moment. Copyright: All distribution and reproduction rights prohibited.

For this 68-year-old patient, who wishes to remain anonymous to preserve his privacy, life has changed a lot since the operation: “I have resumed a lot of activities: I walk, I eat correctly now… I I had come to no longer eat well before the operation. ” And today ? He does not even feel the bioprosthetic heart in his body: “The artificial heart has entered me, it is part of me. There is no difference with the other [cœur], except that I feel much better ”.

How is his daily life going? It is equipped with “two batteries for supplying electricity to the artificial heart, and a control box equipped with security alarms”. An apparatus which weighs 3 kilos and which allowed him to go to lunch without any technical assistance at his son’s home, 70 km from Nantes.

This was the second operation in a four test program. The first transplant was performed on December 18, 2013 in a patient, Claude Dany, then 76 years old after a ten-hour operation. He had survived 74 days with the prosthesis. A technical problem with the prosthesis would have been the cause of the death of the first patient.
This patient, like the second, had a very particular profile: “A patient over 60 years old, with end-stage heart failure, with failure of the right ventricle and the left ventricle. He is a patient who was in the last phase of life, he was in the hospital every two weeks… It was his last chance ”, as explained to why actor Prof. Christian Latrémouille, cardiac surgeon at the Georges Pompidou Hospital (HEGP), who, with Prof. Daniel Duveau, implanted the 1st bioprosthetic artificial heart in the world.