This is a world first that took place at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris: an artificial heart was implanted in a 75-year-old man on Wednesday, December 18, as part of a clinical trial. The operation was supposed to remain secret until the end of the trial, but the information was leaked on Friday, December 20. The Carmat company, designer and developer of the artificial heart project, therefore published a press release announcing that this first implantation went satisfactorily, but adding that “it would of course be premature to draw conclusions because it is about ‘a single implantation and a very short post-surgical timeframe,’ explains Marcello Conviti, General Manager of Carmat.
The patient, currently under intensive care supervision, suffered from end-stage heart failure. Three more people should be operated on 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 for transplantation if he or she is eligible,” explained Carmat during the authorization to carry out implantation issued by the Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) on September 24.
“A great pride for France ”
Professors Alain Carpentier, author of the patent for the artificial heart filed in 1988, Jean-Noël Fabiani, head of the cardiovascular surgery department at the Georges-Pompidou Hospital, Christian Latrémouille and Daniel Duveau, who performed the intervention, as well as that the Director General of Carmat, Marcello Conviti, received a letter from the President of the Republic on Saturday. François Hollande congratulated them on this scientific adventure which opens up “remarkable perspectives”, a technical discovery which “constitutes tremendous hope for patients suffering from advanced heart failure.”
The Minister of Health Marisol Touraine also expressed her satisfaction by declaring that this world first constitutes “a great pride for France”. “This innovative technology could ultimately constitute a valuable alternative to heart transplantation, too rarely available for the millions of people with heart failure around the world”, concludes Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) , in a press release.