A 55-year old man named Craig Lewis was admitted to the Texas Heart Institute with a life threatening heart problem. The condition is called "amyloidosis," a rare autoimmune disease that fills internal organs with a viscous protein that causes rapid heart, kidney, and liver failure.
The man's amyloidosis was getting worse and would die soon. Doctors said he had 12 hours to live.
Fortunately, two doctors from the heart institute named Dr. Billy Cohn and Dr. Bud Frazier installed with what they call a "continuous flow" device after they removed the man's heart. The said device would allow blood to circulate throughout Lewis body without a pulse. Within a day, the man was up and speaking with the doctors.
These two doctors had developed the 'continuous flow' device and had tested it on 70 calves, all of whom produced a flat line on an EKG, no heart rate or pulse, yet they were otherwise perfectly normal – eating food, sleeping, and moving -- but this time, without a heart pumping blood through their bodies.
According to Dr. Cohn: 'If you listened to (the cow’s) chest with a stethoscope, you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. If you hooked her up to an EKG, she’d be flat-lined.’
Lewis was the first human to receive this device. The procedure took less than 48 hours and was a great success. However, his kidneys and liver were failing that's why the man's family asked the doctors to unplug the said device.
Source: Collective
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