Portrait


“Originally, we were using stuff from Home Depot — tile caulk from the bathroom department and drywall tape.” — William Cohn, MD


The trip to Home Depot eventually produced the first pulseless artificial heart, thanks to the ingenuity of Dr. Cohn and O. Howard Frazier, MD, left, at Houston’s Texas Heart Institute. They developed a continuous-flow device consisting of two turbine-like blood pumps that replaced the heart in a patient whose severe case of cardiac amyloidosis precluded a transplant or other treatment. Because the device produced continuous flow, the patient did not have a heartbeat. The pumps worked, but the patient died a month later as the disease attacked his other organs. Still, their work is hailed as a major advancement in treating heart disease. “The beauty of these continuous-flow pumps is obviously the size, and they don’t wear out,” said Dr. Frazier.


72 TEXAS MEDICINE August 2011


PORTRAIT BY MATT RAINWATERS


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76