Physicians have successfully implanted an artificial heart that does not beat:
Salina Mohamed So’ot has no pulse. But she is very much alive.
The 30-year-old administrative assistant is the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously, the reason why there are no beats on her wrist.
An interesting development. I wonder if the efficiency and reliability of such artificial hearts will ever be such that people elect to replace their existing hearts with them even before their biological hearts wear out?
[via Slashdot, from The Straits Times][image from on Technology Review]
I have no doubt people will be replacing healthy, but used, organs before they actually fail. The real question will be if the replacement is mechanical or stem cell grown replacement. I would lay money on the stem cell grown replacement.
I’m not so sure this is the healthiest idea. I like the concept, but I wonder what will happen with the arteries in the long term. I mean, without a pulse there is no good way to shake plaque from the arterial walls. Won’t this mean there’s an increased chance of vascular diesase?
What happens if she has an accident and is pronounced dead because she has no pulse???
(I know there will be other life-signs indicators but it just seemed to be a potentially difficult – perhaps even amusing in a macabre way – scenario.)