Life Without a Pulse

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<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/46912551?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen allowFullScreen></iframe><p>Watch the full video with related content here: <a href="http://www.richannel.org/life-without-a-pulse">http://www.richannel.org/life-without-a-pulse</a></p>

"Cut out the heart and replace it with two turbines..."

In March of 2011 Dr Bud Frazier and Dr Billy Cohn of the Texas Heart Institute removed the dying heart of patient Craig A. Lewis and successfully replaced it with a 'continuous flow' pumping device.

Without the constant beating of his heart Craig Lewis no longer possessed a detectable pulse and was effectively dead by conventional standards. The rhymic contractions of his heart had been replaced instead by a continuous flow generated by the turbines of the impanted device.

The artifical heart inserted into Craig's chest was actually a combination of two pumps, typically used individually to assist one side of a partially damaged heart. In this design two turbine pumps were combined to replace the function of the left and right ventricles, to provide a continuous rather than pulsed output.

This film was originally featured as a shorter edit in the Focus Forward series, which explore innovative people who are reshaping the world through act or invention.