The heart pump is a small piece of technology that may one day be able to save thousands of lives, the lives of people who die waiting for a heart transplant.
“There is no limit on the number of devices and machines that you can make whereas there is a limit on the number of human hearts that you can obtain,” says Dr. James Macgovern of Allegheny General Hospital.

Unlike other implantable devices which require heavy battery packs, the heart pump is completely self contained in the chest and requires no external power source. The heart pump harnesses energy from electrically stimulated skeletal muscle to strengthen a person’s failing heart.
“The heart pump is made for a permanent ‘destination therapy’, which is a permanent artificial heart that’s meant to go in and stay and is designed to work continuously for 10 years without failure,” explains Dennis Trumble, senior researcher at Allegheny General Hospital.
Heart transplant patient Paul Swartz knows first hand the anxiety and fear of not having a permanent therapy. Paul, who suffered a severe heart attack and lost three-quarters of his left ventricle, had a bulkier left ventricular assist device before getting his new heart.
“I had a device that looked like a suitcase cart. It had a battery pack on it that I had to push everywhere I went with the driveline hanging out of my side, and it would rub and cause a lot of problems,” says Paul.
But there is nothing external in the heart pump. The heart pump works by utilizing the mechanical power of the skeletal muscle. A muscle from the back called the latissimus dorsi is attached by its tendon to this mechanism. When an implanted electronic pacemaker stimulates the muscle to contract, it pulls on a handle that activates what’s called a cam mechanism.
“As this thing cycles back and forth, it actually compresses the bellows. When we fill the bellows with fluid it will pump the fluid out and we can use that energy to actuate some sort of a blood pump,” explains Trumble.
The heart pump uses that hydraulic power to compress the heart, and pump blood to the rest of the body as efficiently as a healthy heart.
“With the heart pump, nobody will see anything other than a few surgical scars, and they wouldn’t hear any noise from it. I don’t think there will be a perception that they are being kept alive by a machine,” says Dr. Macgovern.
Paul only wishes that the heart pump had been available during his fight against the clock to get a new heart.
“If it’s somebody that’s waiting for a human heart and they have the heart pump implanted, it’s going to make the world of difference to their quality of life,” says Paul.

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