Experimental Heart Device Keeps Patients Alive -- Machine The Size Of Tuna-Fish Can Does Job Of Pumping Blood To Body

PHILADELPHIA - If it weren't for the two batteries that he carries in a pouch on his hip, 31-year-old Harry Corvese would probably be dead.

The batteries power a heart pump that is keeping him alive while he waits for a heart transplant.

Corvese had the experimental device implanted July 22 at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia after his heart became so weak that doctors feared he would die before a donor heart became available.

Now, Corvese walks around the hospital unencumbered by wires, gaining strength for the transplant operation that lies ahead.

A steady ticking is a constant reminder that a machine the size of a tuna-fish can is doing his heart's job of pumping blood to the body.

"I feel like the crocodile in `Peter Pan' that swallowed the clock. That's what I tell my son," said Corvese, of Wayne, Pa.

Corvese is one of 19 patients who have received the battery-operated heart pump since a Massachusetts company began testing it in 1991.

While still experimental, the device could prove useful someday to thousands of people with heart failure who cannot get a heart transplant, doctors say. There aren't enough donor organs to go around, and many patients die while waiting.

Right now, six heart patients in the United States are walking around with Corvese's type of pump.

Corvese says he tells his 6-year-old-son son, Harry Jr., that "Daddy's heart was so weak that they put a friend in my body to help my heart get strong until a heart comes along for Daddy."

In medical terms, the "friend" is a "left ventricular-assist device," designed to mimic the pumping action of the heart's left lower chamber.

In patients with congestive heart failure, the heart muscle is so weak that the heart can no longer pump efficiently. The patients become tired and short of breath because of a build-up of fluid in the lungs.

It was a year ago this week when Corvese, director of a nonprofit organization, came down with a fever and cold that just wouldn't go away. A round of antibiotics didn't help.

Just walking a block and a half from a garage to his office left Corvese breathless.

Finally, he stopped at Bryn Mawr Hospital to see if there was another antibiotic that could help. The emergency-room staff ordered a chest X-ray.

"Mr. Corvese, you are in congestive heart failure," Corvese recalled the doctor telling him. "Within five minutes, my whole life was changed."

Corvese, who just a month earlier had been healthy and robust, was the victim of a rare complication of a viral disease, which results in severe damage to heart muscle.

Over the next months, his condition worsened. On July 7, doctors at Temple put him on the waiting list for a heart transplant, listing him on the most-urgent status. On July 22, with no donor organ in sight, doctors cut open Corvese's chest and installed the pump.

Dr. Valluvan Jeevanandam, surgical director of Temple's heart-transplant program, said that if Corvese hadn't gotten the ventricular-assist device, his chances of surviving one or two days would have been slim.

The 2-pound pumping device consists of a tube that carries blood from the lower heart chamber to a small pump, which then pushes the blood out through a tube to the body's main artery, the aorta.

A tiny motor runs the pump, and wires go from the pump to a control panel and batteries outside the body.

The pump works at about 80 beats per minute, according to Kurt Dasse, senior vice president at Thermo Cardiosystems Inc. (TCI), which manufactures Corvese's pump.

The pump is similar to another TCI pump that requires a hook-up to a large power box, limiting a patient's ability to move about.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has given TCI approval to test the battery-operated version at 10 medical centers, including Temple.

Among the 19 patients who have gotten the devices, which cost $40,000 to $50,000, one 33-year-old man went 503 days before he finally received a transplant, Dasse said.

There are about 3,000 people in the United States awaiting heart transplants, but only about 2,000 are performed each year.

Corvese said that at first he was always aware of the tick of the pump inside him. But now, he doesn't think twice when he changes the batteries every five hours.

"You become one with it," he said.