A 10-year-old child survived 24 days on an artificial heart at Ann-Arbor-based University of Michigan Health’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, becoming the first child in Michigan to receive a total artificial heart, the Detroit Free Press reported March 27.
The patient may be the smallest child in the world to receive the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart implant, which is designed for adults.
The child’s heart stopped in August while he was at C.S. Mott Children’s being monitored for chest pain from myocarditis. After 60 minutes, CPR failed, and the patient was connected to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.
When physicians saw the patient’s lungs and kidneys were beginning to fail, they decided to attempt implantation of an artificial heart.
“Our entire heart center — from surgeons to cardiologists, nurses, to therapists — got on board with trying this,” Timothy Lancaster, MD, a clinical assistant professor in the section of pediatric cardiovascular surgery at C.S. Mott Children’s, told the Free Press. “Within a couple days, [everyone] was trained and learned this new device so that we could … take care of him.”
Dr. Lancaster performed the procedure with help from University of Michigan Health cardiac surgeons Francis Pagani, MD, PhD, and Jonathan Haft, MD, as well as David Morales, MD, director of cardiothoracic surgery and executive co-director of the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
The patient survived for 24 days on the total artificial heart at C.S. Mott Children’s before a donor heart became available in October. The donor heart transplant was successful and the patient has since returned to his regular activities and school.
Read the full report here.
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