First Total Artificial Heart Implant In New England: The Video

http://vimeo.com/44387011

Brigham and Women’s Hospital announced this morning that surgeons implanted the first total artificial heart in New England.

The Boston Globe reports:

The first total artificial heart implant in New England was performed last February on a 66-year-old retired high school teacher and track and field coach from the South Shore, who was diagnosed last year with a rapidly deteriorating condition that would have caused total heart failure.

The artificial heart that James Carelli received at Brigham and Women’s Hospital is intended as a bridge to a human heart transplant. Doctors diagnosed Carelli with cardiac senile amyloidosis, and they determined that his only option for survival was to receive the artificial heart while he awaits the transplant, according to an e-mail the hospital’s president, Betsy Nabel, sent Thursday morning to staff. He is on the waiting list for a heart transplant, as well as a kidney transplant.