24-year-old Leaves MIchigan Hospital Heartless

By R. Siva Kumar - 16 Jan '15 08:32AM

When 24-year-old Ypsilanti man, Stan Larkin, carried his healthy body from hospital in Michigan, his heart was not in it. Instead, he took his heart in a backpack.

It was a small, portable device that kept him pumped up, according to ijreview.com.

It's called the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, and there are a couple of tubes in his chest. The wires flow from his ribs and connect to a 13-pound compressor in his backpack. It makes him hear the rhythmic gallop of the beat, as he can hear pulses of minutely calibrated, compressed oxygen that are forced into the pneumatic ticker, according to usatoday.com.

When he was 16, Larkin was diagnosed with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), a heart condition that could lead to a "sudden cardiac arrest".

For a few years, Larkin had to depend on implantable defibrillator that could deliver electrical impulses which would keep his heart beating. It was called "Big Blue," a 418-pound device that could not be carried about, and makes patients stay in the hospital's intensive care unit they located a donor heart.

Hence, a small, portable device was identified to substitute his heart. Dr. Jonathan Haft explains: "The device Stan has is the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart, a mechanical pump to bridge him to transplantation. He's still listed for a heart transplant and we hope to transplant him as soon as an organ is available. In the meantime he can be at home, he can be functional, and continue to rehabilitate himself so he's in the best possible shape when his opportunity comes."

Hence that driver rests in a backpack, and it's the only device that keeps him alive.

"It's called a Freedom driver. My heart was too weak to pump blood through my body so I got a Total Artificial Heart and the driver pumps the blood."

Strangely, Stan is the model for his younger brother, Dominique, who suffers from the same condition. He continues to stay at the U-M cardiovascular ICU, even as doctors are trying to determine what could be the treatment that could keep him alive.