Electronic Heart

For more than thirty years, world famous heart surgeon Michael DeBakey has pursued a dream: to perfect an artificial heart. It’s been a race with others determined to get there first, and it’s been dominated by the controversy surrounding a few experimental operations.

 Now TV6 follows the first clinial trial of  a device which could transform the image of the artificial heart, and the prospects for people with heart failure.  In November 1998 Dr DeBakey, now 90 years old, came to Europe to realise his dream.  In a series of ground-breaking operations, he implanted a miniature pump which doesn’t replace the natural heart but assists it.   Eventually, it’s claimed, these pumps could become as routine as the pacemaker.  And remarkably it seems sometimes they may even allow the natural heart to recover...