Dr. Dave Nagpal featured on CTV news with another Cardiac Surgery first

Heart failure support device introduced at LHSC
April 18, 2013
by LHSC Communications

A new heart support device, the HeartMate II Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), developed by Thoratec Corporation, is now available to eligible cardiac patients at LHSC. An internally implantable device, the LVAD was developed with the goal of providing years of circulatory support for patients in heart failure, allowing them to leave hospital and return to their lives as they await the availability of a donor heart.

Until now, many patients with advanced heart failure requiring a transplant have had to remain in hospital while awaiting a donor organ. Hooked up to intravenous pumps providing life-saving medication, these patients were limited in what they could do, drastically impacting their quality of life.

"Because there aren't enough donor hearts to meet the need of these advanced heart failure patients, people waiting for their heart transplant have a very real risk of organ failure and death," said Dr. Dave Nagpal, LHSC cardiac surgeon. "To temporize the situation, we sometimes need to admit people to hospital for intravenous treatment and often, these patients would have had to wait in hospital for an indeterminate length of time until a donor organ was available."

LHSC will also soon have a second device available to patients called the HeartWare Ventricular Assist System which is a smaller LVAD that may be better suited for some applications.

Click here to watch Dr. Dave Nagpal discuss the device with CTV News.