First baby with artificial heart in Japan

TO SAVE a small child who was seriously suffering from a severe heart condition, heart surgery specialists in University of Tokyo performed a ventricular assist device implantation. The little patient would very probably not have survived waiting for transplantation in Japan, or for transport to another country for transplantation without the mechanical support. From a medical point of view the 14-month-old girl would only have been able to survive a few more weeks without the ventricular assist device. Now the artificial heart, aided by a Berlin Heart EXCOR? ventricular assist device, has taken over the pumping function of the completely weakened heart.

Until a donor heart is found for the girl, weighing only seven kilograms, her life depends on the mechanical artificial heart. Assisted by the EXCOR VAD, the infant could be stabilised well enough to be able to wait for transplantation. The ventricular assist device from the German company Berlin Heart has been successfully employed in more than 1,100 children worldwide since its first implantation in 1990. Employed for mechanical heart support for patients who suffer from terminal stage heart failure, it is the only system that can support all patients from newborns up to young people and adults such that they can survive until the heart transplantation.

The implantation was performed on August 2, 2012 by Professor M. Ono and Professor Yoshimasa Murakami, with medical advice from Professor Peter Wearden of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and clinical specialists from the Berlin Heart company from Germany and the USA. It was announced from clinical circles that the little patient is doing well after the operation. At the same time, the procedure was the beginning of the approval study for the EXCOR Paediatric VAD in Japan. The goal of the approval study is to be able to supply all of the paediatric patients with this therapy.

In Europe, the USA and many countries in South America and Asia, this system is already available to patients. The EXCOR VAD is used in 138 centres in 34 countries for bridging the often long waiting periods – in Europe 57.5% of the patients wait longer than one year for a new heart. To date, the VAD has been used in more than 3,000 patients worldwide, from new-borns with a body weight of 2.2 kg up to adults. Occasionally the heart can also recover so well, due to the mechanical support, that the assist device can be explanted and the patient can continue to live with his or her own heart.