A next-gen artificial heart from BiVACOR has successfully been implanted in a patient at Texas Heart Institute. The patient survived more than a week, until a donor heart was found for a transplant.
On July 9, THI successfully implanted a new kind of artificial heart — created in partnership with the institute’s famed surgeon, O.H. “Bud” Frazier — that can prolong the life of patients waiting for transplants. The Institute says the patient in this case was “bridged to transplant” with the implantation of the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart, surviving eight days with the device, until a suitable donor heart could be found and successfully transplanted.
The mechanical heart “is a titanium-constructed biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part that utilizes a magnetically levitated rotor that pumps the blood and replaces both ventricles of a failing heart,” according to a rep for the Institute. The procedure was conducted as part of an FDA feasibility study. Four other patients are to be enrolled in the study.
“The Texas Heart Institute is enthused about the groundbreaking first implantation of BiVACOR’s [device],” says Joseph Rogers, physician, president and CEO of the Institute and principal in the research. “With heart failure remaining a leading cause of mortality globally, the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart offers a beacon of hope for countless patients awaiting a heart transplant.” Rogers shared credit for the groundbreaking development with teams at Baylor College of Medicine and Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
Houston CityBook has covered advances in cardiovascular medicine with special interest in recent times, publishing an essay last fall on Frazier’s storied history in the field, and that of other Houston docs like his mentors Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley. The city has been on the forefront of such developments for many decades.
“A lot of the advances in cardiac surgery occurred here, in this Medical Center,” said Frazier in the essay. He’s been in working on artificial hearts since med school in the 1960s, and also has performed some 1,300 heart transplants — more than any other surgeon on earth. “Not at Harvard or Princeton or Yale. They didn’t do it. I think it was done here because you could do things, and if it failed, you could try again. I don’t think it could have been done anywhere but Texas — and in Texas I don’t think it could have been done anywhere but Houston.”
O.H. “Bud” Frazier, a pioneering surgeon and inventor at Texas Heart Institute, has worked on perfecting the artificial heart since the 1960s. (photo by Jhane Hoang)
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Rachel Gardner with her flower necklaces and, at left, Calla Lilly necklace
Gardner appeared in our 2019 photo essay A Day in the Life of the Arts. The image of Gardner, pregnant and hard at work late at night in her garage studio, surrounded by ghostly papier-mâché sculptures of forest animals and antlered children, encapsulated the subject matter Gardner explores in her art and the real-life demands of maintaining a practice while holding down a teaching job and raising a family.
Gardner began mounting her sculptures to a “wall of life” in her home studio in 2022, including small sculptures of bugs, birds and wildflowers shaped out of polymer clay, baked in the kitchen oven, and then painted and coated with resin. One day, Gardner created a tulip, her favorite flower, and decided she’d like to wear it out in public as a necklace. People were intrigued and asked her about the piece.
“This is only a glimpse of what I’ve got going on in my studio,” says Gardner of that first tulip. “I’ve got hundreds of wildflowers on the wall.” The resulting wearable pieces are organic, painterly, surprisingly sturdy, and a welcome alternative to store-bought manufactured jewelry.
“I’m really enjoying pooling from this wall of life,” says Gardner of what has become a creative wellspring. “My kids have gotten used to seeing birds, bugs and flowers in the oven!”
Gardner and members of Foltz’s staff will be wearing some of her sculptures at this Saturday’s opening. Wisitors will have to opportunity to try them on as well.
Endless Summer runs July 27-Aug 25 and includes works by Mallory Agerton, Saran Alderson, Erika Alonso, Tom Bandage, Lotus Bermudez, Colleen Blackard, DUAL, E. Dan Klepper, Ibsen Espada, J. Antonio Farfan, Brendan Flores, Rachel Gardner, Garrett Griffins, Peter Healy, Otis Huband, Sarah Fisher, Jonathan Paul Jackson, Sirena LaBurn, Melinda Laszczynski, Ambrosia Max, Jacob Melgren, Matt Messinger, Susu Meyer, Kate Mulholland, Charlotte Seifert, Ben Sklar, Robin Utterback and Doug Welsh.
Gardner was featured in CityBook’s “A Day in the Life of the Arts” photo essay in 2019. (photo by Jhane Hoang)
Gardner’s wearable art will be featured in new art show.