Heart Failure Health Center

Permanent Heart Pump Implant Gives Man Second Chance

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Frazier says the device is among the most patient friendly of the heart pumps because "it's very quiet. Patients don't even hear it, and it's easy to forget about it. One patient said the only difference she noticed was that she wasn't short of breath."

William Smith, PhD, a researcher in the department of biomedical engineering at the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, says that there are "about 10 to 12 devices that are in development or in clinical trials now" of which the Jarvik 2000 is one. "But Jarvik is actually coming fairly late to the field because another manufacturer, MicroMed, already has over 50 cases with their device, which is also a rotary impeller design," he explains.

Smith says that the goal of most researchers in the field "is over the next three to five years to get maybe a dozen devices into clinical trials so that someday a surgeon will have as many as 10 different devices that will be options suited to individual patient needs."