4Alexander




 * Project 2:**

No Pulse Heart: Analysis
 * Project 3:**

Let me start by saying that this article was very interesting to me. The author, Dan Baum, was frequently off-topic, but the information is all there - you just have to dig for it. Basically, Drs. Frazier and Cohn developed an artificial heart that continuously pumps blood throughout the body. Why would they do this? Well, artificial hearts have generally been orchestrated through loud, bulky, cumbersome machines used to impractically keep the pulse going. That's no way to live and some people who live on them would rather die. So the solution to this would be a heart with no pulse that continuously flows blood throughout the body. But how would such a task be feasible? This is where the mechanics of the no pulse heart come in. Richard Wampler, a surgeon and medical engineer, was on a trip to Egypt when he saw workers use an Archimedes' screw (auger) to pump water out of a well. This inspired him to patent a device that would utilize the Archimedes' screw to continuously move blood through the body sans a pulse. Seems like a miracle, but one thing stands in its way - time. A woman with a heart murmur was fixed with the new Heartmate II, but that's a murmur. If someone's heart completely gives out or goes through a heart attack, the Heartmate may not be able to keep them alive for long. This is why more funding is necessary. The Heartmate needs to be improved in order to keep going for decades.