Heart Assist Device Helps Heart Transplant 
Candidates Wait At Home

	April 23, 1999 - The Novacor left ventricular
assist system is effective in allowing heart 
transplant patients to go home while they wait for 
donor hearts, according to a new study. More than 
150 patients living on the Left Ventricular Assist 
System as a bridge to transplant were studied.
	Patients discharged from the hospital with 
the LVAS while waiting for donor hearts did better 
than patients who stayed in the hospital, reported 
Robert Kormos, MD, director of the transplant program
at the University of Pittsburgh Med Center.
	29% of the patients waited outside the hospital,
6 of them for more than a year and 2 of them for more 
than 2 years. "Experience with the discharged patients 
shows there is improved quality of life and safety for
long-term use," said Dr. Kormos.
	With the number of patients being placed on 
transplant waiting lists growing each year but the 
supply of organs remaining the same, assist devices 
give patients a way to maintain heart function until 
donor hearts can be found. More than 4000 patients 
are on the heart transplant waiting list. Waiting times
can be 2-3 years in some parts of the country. About 
20% of those waiting die each year.
	"Assist devices save patients’ lives. Unless 
we are able to produce more organs, we will need to 
depend more and more on this technology," commented 
Dr. Kormos. The FDA approved the Novacor LVAS in 
September of 1998, but the results just presented 
by Dr. Kormos had not been published.
	Between 1996 and 1998, 156 patients were 
placed on the Novacor LVAS, an electromagnetically 
driven pump implanted in the abdomen that connects 
to the heart’s main pumping chamber. An electronic 
controller and battery pack worn on a belt or as a 
shoulder bag provide power. Their outcomes were 
compared to a group of 35 control patients who were 
treated with conventional medical therapy.
	77% of the LVAS patients were successfully
transplanted, compared to 37% of the control group. 
Deaths on the waiting list were fewer for those on 
the LVAS - 23% compared to 63% for those patients 
not on an assist system. 14 patients remain on the 
device still waiting for a heart. The average time 
on the device was 97 days. One patient has remained 
on the device for nearly 1000 days.
	In the LVAS, an inflow circuit directs blood 
from the left ventricle into the blood pump, and the 
pump ejects blood through an outflow conduit into the 
body’s arteries. The wearable controller and batteries
are connected to the implanted pump by a small tube 
through the patient's skin containing several wires.
The system is responds to the patient’s changing 
heartbeat.