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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (Reuters) – The second recipient of the world's first self-contained artificial heart is not progressing as well as hoped, his doctors said on Monday.
They said former tire salesman Tom Christerson, 70, has improved since last week, when he developed a high fever and transient renal and hepatic failure.
Christerson's temperature has come down and his kidneys and liver are functioning in a normal range, Dr. Laman Gray, one of the surgeons at the University of Louisville in Kentucky who implanted the device, said in a statement.
Dr. Gray said the medical team does not believe the problem is related to the grapefruit-sized plastic and titanium replacement heart that was implanted. The device, known as AbioCor, is manufactured by Danvers, Massachusetts-based Abiomed Inc.
The device has been implanted in four patients so far–two of them since Christerson's September 13 procedure. Christerson had serious lung disease and end-stage heart failure and was given less than a 20% chance of surviving 30 days at the time of his surgery. He was returned to the ventilator last week due to general muscle weakness.
Christerson's surgeons said they were consulting with a large team of specialists to identify the source of the fever, but they have so far been unsuccessful. "At this point, we are treating this as an acute, reversible situation," Dr. Gray said. "We don't feel that it is a problem related to the device–it has continued to work flawlessly."
The first patient, Bob Tools, 59, received the AbioCor on July 2 and is doing well. Doctors are working on a discharge plan for him, though no discharge date has been set.
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