People will live to celebrate their 95th birthdays Heart failure is one of the commonest causes of death, but implanting an artificial heart in a patient, whatever his/her age, can increase life expectancy by 10 years, said eminent heart surgeon Dr Devi Shetty.
He was speaking at an event in the city to announce the phased rollout of hospital information systems applications with technology partner HCL Infosystems, across the 22 Narayana Hrudayalaya hospitals he heads. According to Dr Shetty, some 10,000 people in the world are living normal lives with artificial hearts and it won’t be long before people live to celebrate their 95th birthdays.
Death due to heart failure can be prevented by implanting an artificial heart which is run by a rechargeable battery. But since the device costs Rs 50 lakh, it is out of the reach of the common man. At present, we are importing artificial hearts from a company in Australia and are in talks with a company in Brazil which offers great technology at an affordable price. This may bring down the cost of an artificial heart to around Rs 3-4Lakh,” he said.
All those patients who are not able to get a donor heart for transplantation can hope to live longer with affordable artificial hearts very soon. “One of the biggest concerns of implanting an artificial heart is quality of life. We have implanted seven artificial hearts in India and three of those patients have been living normal lives for the last five years. The only thing they cannot do is to swim, because a wire comes out of their chest which is linked to the battery, which they carry on their person,” Dr Shetty explained. Mr Chennabasappa, a poor farmer from Haveri, who was bedridden before he received an artificial heart implant from Narayana Hrudayalaya, now rides his motorcycle and even does manual labour on his farm. He recharges his battery with a generator set when there is no electricity.