I wonder if his mates will forever call him “Tin Man”.
Did some fuckin’ Aussie heart surgeon just breeze into a Home Depot and saunter into the plumbing aisle in his board shorts and flips flops and just whip together a heart out of brass fittings and teflon tape???
“Oi! DANNY, YA FUCKIN’ BOGAN! I DONE DID YA UP A NEW RICKY TICKEY—ALL FUCKIN’ SHINEY AND CHROME!!! GRAB A CARPET KNIFE AND SOME DUNNY GLOVES—WE’ll GET THIS FUCKER INTO YOUR BLUDGER CHEST BEFORE YA SHEILA SAYS YA WERE CHUCKING A SICKIE!”
SHINY AND CHROME
The surgeon yelled
WITNESS!!
And thrust the heart into their chest.
WITNESS!!!
SHINY AND
CHROMEBRASS
Function over form, I suppose. I am pretty sure it’s mostly made of titanium and silicone.
It does seems like that sometimes tho, that surgeons are the mechanics of the human body, fixing you up in the most crude ways, as long as it gets the job done.
Friend of mine who’d been in the room for bone surgeries said it was basically just carpentry. All saws, drills & screws.
That’s the reason a friend of mine once said that surgeons are the only Doctor meds he has respect for.
Also, what do you mean form follows function? I looked like a frocking mini turbo charger 😎
It’d be a Bunnings down here not home depot, but it sure looks like it
The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.
Just in case anyone else also found the title ambiguous regarding whether “100 days” meant he died 😅
Thank you.
That thing looks so steampunk, I’m kinda jealous.
First of all: congratulations. Seriously. This is awesome! Secondly: you designed the most Steampunk looking heart you could. Bravo, truly a capital marvel of fine craftsmanship.
That’s fuckin’ nuts.
Also, this headline is bad. I thought he died. No. He just got a transplant after 100 days (whew).
it would be so fucking cool if he still had it but it really is uncharted territory
This might be sort if news. I know a guy that had a pump for a heart it pumped the same non stop pressure and he wore a satchel type battery pack forever but functioned fairly normal. Always had to keep extra batteries around and the internal pump had a backup of 30 to 45 mins. This was 15 years ago.
Sounds like a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD)! They’re still being used today, although usually as a bridge to transplant rather than definitive therapy.
This new development is definitely exciting though, hopefully it will offer a new longer term alternative for patients :)
I don’t recall him ever having a transplant done but again as I said below in the long story you might find interesting. I haven’t heard from him in years. It was certainly wild to think about and to realize he has no heartbeat anymore. I’ll ask a family member what ever come of him. Hopefully all is well with him. Who knows.
If it was the same pressure all the time, does that mean he couldn’t do anything that would otherwise cause a normal heart to beat faster (run, exercise, feel nervous)? Would he faint or something since his “heart” won’t beat faster?
So his heart was pronounced dead, it didnt function but was left inside I think. I always wondered his abilities and I asked once that very question, particularly towards having sex lol. He used to be an alcoholic and could no longer drink as it would thin the blood and thus mess with the pumping ability.
I don’t recall him ever doing anything strenuous and truthfully don’t recall his answer to that question but seems like he joked that he could still do it with a woman. He walked slow, talked slowish labored sort of, laughed sheepishly like a labored laugh. Generally looked sick like you can imagine. He drove cars and that’s about all I remember. Im unsure if he could turn it up maybe? I haven’t spoken with him in a decade. I don’t even know if he is still alive.
He got robbed/mugged in a big city about 10 years ago, the mugger took his satchel containing his medical battery bank despite him explaining the battery pack and pleading at gunpoint on a downtown street. He nearly died and an ambulance couldn’t arrive in time. A stranger he flagged on the street transported him to a hospital where they somehow got him hooked up to a new battery system. They said he had mere minutes left on the internal battery inside his pump. That was the last info I heard of him. Wild to think about and he told the robber it was a medical pack but they thought it was a laptop bag and took it anyhow, it was more square like a car battery than a satchel but more vertical shaped like a rectangle.
I believe this is already the case with pacemakers
Sounds like a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD). Interestingly enough, with the older implants there is no detectable heartbeat under a stethoscope due to the way the pump functions. Pretty surprising when you’re expecting to find one, and has led to it being unoficially dubbed VLAD in reference to the creatures of the night.
This rejogs a partial memory. I do recall he said he no longer has a heart beat. He told me his heart was pronounced dead part or the whole thing I am unsure. I gave a decent story and better description below in another comment.
Rare humanity win.
I wonder if there’ll ever be artificial heart that would last for decades, I imagine that would save lots of people.
