Heart with no beat offers hope of new lease on life

The search for the perfect artificial heart seems never-ending. After decades of trial and error, surgeons remain stymied in their quest for a machine that does not wear out, break down or cause clots and infections. But Billy Cohn, MD, and Bud Frazier, MD, at the Texas Heart Institute say they have developed a machine that could avoid all that with simple whirling rotors — which means people may soon get a heart that has no beat. Inside the institute's animal research laboratory is an 8-month-old calf with a soft brown coat named Abigail. Cohn and Frazier removed Abigail's heart and replaced it with two centrifugal pumps. "If you listened to her chest with a stethoscope, you wouldn't hear a heartbeat," says Cohn. "If you examined her arteries, there's no pulse. If you hooked her up to an EKG, she'd be flat-lined." The pumps spin Abigail's blood and move it through her body.