More Photos (2):

Other articles by Dan Sorenson:

Reversing cardiac disease West Nile confirmed in Pima woman Pima County: First case of West Nile virus this season confirmedDesert wildlife on rise in Tucson as trees mature Breathe easy: Spores, mold are light Internet travel site gives Tucson's desert museum high marks Tortoises need homes Theft of 'sentimental' chair prompts online reward offer Searchers cannot find flood victim Bank failure doesn't lead to panic or disruption at Tucson branches

Dental
DENTAL ASSISTANT Office and Clerical
Carf International
Clerical Office Assitant Mechanical
ROYCE MASONRY
FLEET MECHANIC Office and Clerical
ChartOne
Site Supervisor Health Care
CORE SOURCE
RN UTILIZATION MANAGEMENT Trades/Construction
Cascade Electric
Journeymen Electricians General
Confidential
Lead Maintenance

You, too, can implant an artificial heart.

Or so it seemed this week as Dr. Jack Copeland trained an East Coast surgical team at University Medical Center.

Except for the images of a human heart on the screen in a conference room, Copeland could have been teaching mechanics how to do a system upgrade on some obscure piece of machinery.

But the students were a heart-transplant team from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, in town this week to become certified for implanting the CardioWest Total Artificial Heart-temporary, aka TAH-t.

It was the second such training in a week as the heart's maker, Tucson-based SynCardia Systems Inc., embarks on an effort to become profitable by expanding the number of hospitals using the heart. Last week, a surgical team from Ohio State University Medical Center trained in Tucson.

SynCardia is trying to add two hospitals per month this year to its list of hospitals using the heart, which is a temporary replacement while patients await a permanent transplant heart. For now, that list is 10 hospitals long.

In his presentation, Copeland described cutting away the patient's heart to leave the large veins and arteries that would be connected to SynCardia's CardioWest TAH-t.

The toughest parts of the procedure, to hear Copeland tell it in his soft-spoken way, relate to suturing the artificial heart's synthetic fabric vein and artery stub ends to the real thing. Once you do that, it's just a matter of snapping fabric "cuffs" of the arteries and veins onto the artificial heart's input and output flanges, Copeland said.

As the Pennsylvania team of surgeons, an anesthesiologist, nurses and medical technicians watched, occasionally asking questions, it still often sounded like advanced auto repair.

Indeed, Copeland said, there are aspects of the surgery that are physically challenging. It helps to have at least one person on the team with "big hands and long fingers," said Copeland, a member of Syncardia's board of directors and its lead trainer.

The artificial heart uses diaphragms, not so different from what one might find in an old car's vacuum advance, driven by air pressure to pump the blood. The air pressure is delivered by two clear plastic lines that exit the body near the abdomen and connect to a file-cabinet-sized controller.

Later, the Pennsylvania doctors practiced implanting a CardioWest TAH-t in a live, anesthetized pig, so they'll have hands-on experience before performing the surgery on humans. Copeland said a pig's heart approximates a human heart, and operating on a pig of human size helps the trainees work in a life-size space.

The Philadelphia hospital, one of the busiest heart-transplant centers in the United States, does about 50 transplants each year, said surgeon Dr. Rohinton Morris, the hospital's Heart Transplantation and Mechanical Assist Program surgical director.

"We're limited in the U.S. and around the world in the amount of donors" available for transplants, Morris said.

Having an operation that allows patients to live on with a machine would decrease deaths from heart disease and failure, he said.

Right now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved only the use of the CardioWest artificial heart, with its cumbersome, filing-cabinet-sized power supply and controller nicknamed "Big Blue." Patients at UMC who have received the heart are encouraged to move about the hospital and grounds, but they are followed by "Big Blue" and a technician who pushes and attends to it.

But there is a much smaller portable power unit, already certified for use in Europe, that could give thousands of people — and the CardioWest artificial heart — a new life, said Dr. Richard G. Smith, UMC's technical director and SynCardia's chief technical officer.

Smith said the portable power unit can be wheeled on a small cart and slung over a shoulder, allowing an artificial-heart recipient to even go shopping at a mall.

Not only would the portable power unit let patients go home — where Smith and Morris said they tend to recover more rapidly and at far less expense — but it also could allow some older patients to avoid a transplant entirely and live a relatively full life with the artificial heart.

The implications for SynCardia are immense, as it could potentially be selling thousands of artificial hearts every year in the United States alone, SynCardia spokesman Don Isaacs said. The company will soon apply to the FDA to have it test the unit for possible use in the United States.

As the team trained, a reminder of the purpose of its work was lingering on a hospital patio — Danuel Allen, a 57-year-old Mesa man who had a massive heart attack on Feb. 1 and received an implant five weeks ago.

"I thought I was going to die. . . . They would have had a funeral for me three months ago," Allen said.

And now? "I feel like a million dollars," he said.

TECH FILE