Devices and Surgical Procedures to Treat Heart Failure
Technology has come a long way since the first rudimentary artificial heart, invented by Dr. Domingo Liotta, was implanted in a history-making operation at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston in April 1969. The patient, a 47-year-old man with heart failure, became the first recipient of the Liotta-Cooley Artificial Heart while waiting for a human heart transplant. The artificial heart did its job of keeping him alive for 64 hours, but he succumbed just two days after receiving the human heart. Medical science has grown by leaps and bounds in the 46 years that have transpired since that historic day, both in terms of device technology and human organ transplantation. Although much more is known today about the correlation between obesity, diabetes, diet, and smoking to cardiovascular disease, the rates of obesity and diabetes are steadily increasing. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality worldwide, with an estimated 7.4 million deaths due to coronary heart disease (CHD) and 6.7 million deaths caused by stroke in 2012.
