What Does the Artificial Heart Do

The artificial heart is a mechanical circulatory support device that replaces the lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart in patients with advanced heart failure. Similar to a heart transplant, the surgery to implant an artificial heart is complex.

What are the benefits of an artificial heart?

• they can be made entirely out of materials that do not cause rejection by the body (unlike with heart transplants). …
• heart transplants can only by done with donor material, of which there is a major shortage.

Do people with artificial hearts have a heartbeat?

Artificial hearts work by pumping deoxygenated blood from the body to the lungs. The device then pumps oxygenated blood through the body. The newly approved device, called AbioCor, made by Massachusetts-based Abiomed, uses an implanted hydraulic pumping system to simulate a natural heart beat.