Artificial Heart that Doesn’t Beat

A new concept for an artificial heart could solve some of those issues. But its innovative pulse-free architecture might also raise problems of its own.

The newly approved device, called AbioCor, made by Massachusetts-based Abiomed, uses an implanted hydraulic pumping system to simulate a natural heart beat. But an alternative design, conceived by O.H. “Bud” Frazier, a prominent heart surgeon and pioneer in the development of cardiac devices at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, pumps blood through the body continuously, rather than with the periodic beat of the normal heart.

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