It seems to me that the basic technology of pumping heart around that the heart does is not actually that hard?
Of course, it needs to be fairly reliable, but that is what redundancy is for: just have two or three of them.
Another issue: how to maintain the hearts as and when they break down. Potential solution: have a flap, a door, that opens on the front of one’s chest, so that one can access the various hearts. Sort of like the electrical panel in one’s house.
Another issue: power… pumping blood around probably needs a *lot* of power. How much? Probably should check that. I feel that mobile phone batteries could probably deliver a fair amount of power. Give each of the two or three redundant hearts its own battery, and then there is redundance. Just open the panel to swap in and out a fresh one.
What about if someone forgets to charge up the batteries?
Initially, an alarm could sound to warn them, then as the battery becomes lower, the heart could slow down, ultimately slowing down to a rate just enough to prevent the person dieing, but they might collapse to the street, unable to move, effectively forcing them to be given medical treatment, ie replacement of batteries. This seems to me to be a better option than just stopping the heart after the batteries have been completely emptied!
Wouldn’t it be easy to murder someone by simply taking out the batteries? Sure, but it’s easy to murder someone anyway by just pressing on their windpipe, or slipping a knife into their heart, and yet generally we manage to survive 24 hours a day without such incidents impinging on our lives.
I suppose one issue to consider would be making the heart faster during fast exercise. A couple of thoughts:
- one could of course make the heart sensitive to adrenaline, but that’s complicated, maybe expensive, I don’t know how easy this is?
- otherwise, one could just make the heart go constantly the same speed. if someone does too much exercise, they’ll feel faint, but they’re not going to die from feeling faint, though they might collapse, probably workable
- and, one could just add the ability to control manually the speed of the heart. One button for faster one for slower.
Right, after writing this, I’ve googled and found a wikipedia article about artificial hearts.
It seems they exist. The concepts above do not seem to be being applied though:
- the hearts are only implanted singly, with no redundance
- they are not considered a permanent solution to heart failure
- power supply is from external packs via a transduction coil, which is fine I suppose
- there is no way to easily slot in and out a new heart when the old one breaks down
My first thought is that if it is easy, which superficially it sounds, then why hasn’t it happened.
The problem could be in the heart’s ability to respond to electrical and hormonal messages from the brain.
How would you speed the heart up in response to low oxygen levels in the brain, adrenalin and fight or flight reactions, and during exercise or slow it to sleep?
Then there’s good old toxic shock syndrome and the lifetime’s drugs required to stop your body reacting to it – although pace-makers are commonplace.