Digital Magazine Video Features SynCardia Total Artificial Heart

Watch and listen to surgeons and patients talk about their experience with the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart in the latest edition of the digital magazine HP Matter.

The video, “Lifesaving Tech: Living with an Artificial Heart,” features Randy Shepherd and Christopher Larsen, two Arizona men who were implanted with the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart as a bridge to a donor heart transplant. They suffered from end-stage biventricular (both sides) heart failure in which the ventricles in their diseased hearts could no longer pump enough blood for them to survive.

Shepherd was successfully bridged to a donor heart transplant on September 15, 2014.

See this video and learn more about Randy Shepherd’s and Christopher Larsen’s stories.

Larsen has been waiting for a matching donor heart since July 2013. “The artificial heart kept me going for 15 months until I could get the transplant,” Shepherd says in the video. “Now that I have the transplant, I’m planning on another 30-plus years.”

The piece also includes comments about this technology from physicians who have implanted the SynCardia Heart. Like a heart transplant, the Total Artificial Heart is the only approved device that eliminates the source of end-stage biventricular heart failure. The SynCardia Heart helps patients recover and regain their health and strength for donor heart transplants.

The video includes discussion of 3D printer technology that produces a CT-guided, virtual 3D modeling platform to correctly fit the SynCardia Heart for smaller patients.

“3D printing gives you a much better idea and confidence as a surgeon to go in there and say, ‘You know what? We can do this. It’ll be fine,’” says Dr. Zain Khalpey, a heart surgeon at the University of Arizona Medical Center.

The three-minute, 35-second video is published on the HP Matter website and was produced by Fast Company Content Studios. The current issue focuses on health care technology.

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SynCardia Systems, Inc. in Tucson, Arizona is the privately-held owner and manufacturer of the world's first and only FDA, Health Canada and CE approved Total Artificial Heart for use as a bridge to transplant for people suffering from end-stage biventricular heart failure in which both ventricles can no longer pump enough blood for a person to survive.

More than 1,400 implants of the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart account for over 400 patient years of life on the device. Since January 2010 more than 550 SynCardia Hearts have been implanted.

The youngest patient to receive a SynCardia Heart was 9 years old; the oldest was 80 years old.The longest a patient has lived with a SynCardia Heart was nearly four years (1,374 days) before receiving a successful donor heart transplant Sept. 11, 2011.

SynCardia Systems also manufactures the Freedom® portable driver, which powers the SynCardia Heart while allowing clinically stable patients to be discharged from the hospital to live at home and in their communities. The wearable Freedom driver has been used by more than 200 patients, accounting for over 120 years of support.