Carmat, the artificial heart maker, is going to wait before conducting the next human heart transplant after its first patient died, one of the company's co-founders announced Sunday.
Carmat's first patient, a 76-year-old man, died March 2 in Paris two and a half months after his operation. The man suffered from a fatal heart disease in which his heart could not pump enough blood to sustain his body. Before the transplant, he was told he had only days or weeks to live.
"Patients are still being chosen, but of course we will wait to hear a little more on the causes of the death of the first patient before transplanting another artificial heart," Philippe Pouletty, director general of Truffle Capital, one of the main shareholders in Carmat, told i Tele television.
The device's inventor, French surgeon Alain Carpentier, told the weekly Journal du Dimanche on Sunday that the heart had stopped after a short circuit, but that the reasons behind the death remain unclear.
"I just want to remind you that for the first tests the survival expectation was 30 days and the first patient survived two and a half months after his transplant," Pouletty said on behalf of Carmat's device.
It is designed to replace a real heart for up to five years, and operates just as a real heart would, thanks to biological materials and sensors. Its main use is to prolong the life of terminally ill patients who have no hope of receiving a real heart transplant.
Three more patients in France with terminal heart failure and no other therapeutic option are due to be fitted with Carmat's device.
Prior to this case, Carmat said that if the design passed its first safety test, it would fit the device into about 20 more patients with less severe heart failure later this year. Its goal is to request the right to market the product in Europe by 2015.
