If former vice president Richard B. Cheney's experience is similar to that of other patients who have heart pumps implanted, he has a better than 50-50 chance of surviving two years. The device, which takes over the work of the heart's main pumping chamber, should make him feel better and allow him to do activities as strenuous as riding a bicycle. But it is far from a miracle cure for end-stage congestive heart failure, the condition from which he apparently suffers.
Cheney, 69, had a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, implanted in his chest last week at Inova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute. In a statement Wednesday, Cheney said he was "entering a new phase of the disease . . . and decided to take advantage of one of the new technologies available."
The former vice president has not made public key details of his treatment. It isn't known whether he's hoping to get a heart transplant and is using the device only until then. The exact type of LVAD he received also isn't known. However, heart failure experts and published studies of ventricular assist devices sketch a general picture of his prognosis. It's likely he received a HeartMate II LVAD, made by the California company Thoratec, which is approved as either "bridge to transplantation" or as "destination therapy" -- permanent use. It consists of an electrical device implanted in the chest that draws blood from the left ventricle and pumps it into the aorta, the main artery leaving the heart.
A study published in December showed that 58 percent of patients who got the HeartMate II were alive two years later, and 46 percent were alive, hadn't had a stroke (the chief complication) and hadn't needed it replaced. Patients got a different Thoratec LVAD -- one that pumps the blood in pulses, like the heart, rather than continuously -- did much worse, the study found. Twenty-four percent survived two years, and nearly all of them had had their devices replaced during that period.
The prognosis for people with end-stage congestive heart failure who get neither a transplant nor an LVAD is dismal. In a previous study, it was 8 percent after two years. SOURCE: Washington Post
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