Early Attempts.

Heart donors are scarce, and recipients often do not have the luxury of time. To facilitate the process of heart transplantation, there was a concerted effort during the 1960s to develop an artificial heart for temporary use in bridging the time gap between a patient's need and the availability of a donor or as an assisting device for people whose hearts are not fully functional. Early experiments involved the use of a plastic banana-shaped device with internal valves to assist the blood in its movement from one heart chamber to another. A large pump outside the body provided the force. Dr. Michael E. DeBakey used such a device, which he called an intrathoracic pump, on a forty-two-year-old patient in 1963, but the patient died four days later, and there was some indication that the pump had caused blood clots.

An Improved Model.