If you need a heart transplant, or will need one in the next few decades, you’ll probably be in better shape in the near future, assuming you can wait a while. That’s because Sujoy Guha, an Indian biomedical engineer has conjured up a new artificial heart at a cost of about $3,000. That’s about $47,000 cheaper than the going rate for an artificial heart these days, one that is nevertheless dangerous and leads to strokes and blood clots.
Guha believes that the reason that there are so many problems with these machines is that we are trying too hard to replicate the actual thing. Meaning, the human heart works by building up pressure in one of its four chambers – the left ventricle. That one part of the heart is responsible for most of the work. That’s how it works in mother nature, but to try to mimic that artificially puts unnecessary stress on one part of the machine, which leads to problems, because it damages blood cells which leads to clotting.
Dr. Guha likens the process to trying to scale a four-foot rise in just one bound. “Do it too often and your knees will give way,” he said. “Much better to use a series of small steps.”
So he thought up a machine that slowly builds up pressure using all of its chambers. And he was inspired by the cockroach, whose heart has 13 chambers that each slowly build up pressure to move blood around. If one of them fails, the cockroach still survives. (They’ll need all those backup chambers for when you step on them.)
Dr. Guha has actually been working on this model since the 60′s. He’s now testing the heart on goats. Hopefully, the goats will do well. Humans hopefully come up on about a year and a half.
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