World’s Smallest Artificial Heart
July 24, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
Last May 24th, surgeons at the Bambino Gesu’ Hospital in Rome implanted the world’s smallest artificial heart in a baby. This continuous flow “Jarvik 2000” weighs only 11 grams and is made of titanium. It comes almost exactly three decades after a patient, Barney Clark, received a “Jarvik 7” which was designed to be a permanent heart replacement. Clark lived for 112 days. Few stories in the history of medicine are more intriguing than the artificial heart, including the work of an unlikely inventor, American ventriloquist Paul Winchell. MORE
Image Credit: Jarvik Heart