1 Read the passage below. Use the information in the passage and your own
knowledge to answer the questions that follow.
Artificial heart pump gives life to dying patients
1 In June 2000, a 61-year-old man in the United Kingdom became the first person
to have a permanent artificial heart pump fitted. Before the pump was fitted, the
man was told that he had only a few weeks left to live. However, the pump has
taken on the work of his heart: taking blood from the heart and delivering it to
5 the rest of the body. Pumps like these could be a possible alternative to heart
transplants, which are usually performed on patients whose heart has begun to
fail.
The operation to insert the pump took several hours but the surgeons were very
pleased with the speed of the man’s recovery. During the operation, the pump
10 was fitted into the left ventricle of the man’s heart. This heart chamber provides
much of the pumping power of the heart when it contracts.
The pump is powered by batteries, which are usually carried around the patient’s
waist. The batteries are connected to the pump by wires which enter the body at
the back of the skull. The wires then pass down through the neck, into the chest
15 cavity and connect to the pump in the heart. The batteries are rechargeable and
need changing every eight hours.
The surgeon who performed this operation wrote about it in a medical journal.
He said that the pump had helped to lower the patient’s blood pressure and had
done no damage to his red blood cells. He also reported that, six weeks after the
20 operation, the patient’s heart and liver were working much better than before
the procedure and that the man was able to take exercise. As the patient takes
exercise, he can change the speed of the pump.
The important medical advance with this pump is that it is fitted permanently.
Previous artificial heart pumps had to be replaced every few months and
25 were also much larger and noisier. The new pumps give doctors hope that
this treatment could solve the problem of a shortage of hearts available for
transplants. The heart surgeon said, ‘Currently, the outlook for patients who are
not able to have a transplant is poor. Our laboratory experience and the result
from this first operation with a small, silent intraventricular device suggests a
30 potential alternative for many patients.’