No I wouldn't have expected them to comment about the calf trials.
This news may have put a damper on the Cdn price yesterday. I do agree with Rod Bryden that this device is not competition.
Rival beats WorldHeart, implants first remote device
Kate Jaimet
The Ottawa Citizen; with files from The Associated Press
An American company that beat World Heart Corp. in a lawsuit last year has now beaten the Ottawa-based firm to the mark in implanting a remote-powered artificial heart device in a human being.
On Monday, surgeons from the University of Louisville removed the heart of a gravely ill patient and replaced it with the AbioCor, a grapefruit-sized titanium and plastic pump.
The device, developed by Massachusetts-based Abiomed Inc., becomes the first completely self-contained artificial heart to be implanted in a human.
Meanwhile, WorldHeart is still testing its Heart Saver artificial heart device in animals, and expects to begin clinical trials in humans late this year or early next year after receiving Health Canada approval.
But WorldHeart CEO Rod Bryden said yesterday Abiomed's product does not compete directly with his.
"I think it's an outstanding technological achievement," Mr. Bryden said. "But we do not consider it to be commercially significant to us."
There is an important difference between the two products. With the AbioCor, the natural heart is removed and replaced by the pump. With the Heart Saver, the diseased heart remains in the chest, but the pump supplements the activity of the heart's left ventricle.
One thing the two devices have in common, however, is a power system that transmits electricity to the artificial heart remotely, without any wires piercing the skin. WorldHeart's device relies on two metal coils, one outside the chest that transmits electricity through the skin, and one inside the chest that receives the electricity and uses it to power the pump.
WorldHeart filed a lawsuit in January 1998 alleging Abiomed had misappropriated the remote power technology and used it to develop its AbioCor. The $8-million lawsuit was decided in favour of Abiomed last year. But Mr. Bryden insists his product will eventually prevail in the heart device market.
He said he believes there will be far more potential users of the Heart Saver than the AbioCor once both are available, because the Heart Saver allows each patient to bolster his or her own heart instead of having it replaced.
"In the vast majority of cases, we believe the choice would be to have your heart remain," he said, adding the Heart Saver should give patients months or years of productive life.
Such heart-boosting devices are already in use, but most of them are not remote-powered and rely instead on electrical wires that pierce the patient's skin. Patients have lived for up to four years on these devices.
The patient who received the AbioCor survived the operation and is comfortable. But even with the new heart, the patient is expected to live only 60 days rather than 30 days without it.
The AbioCor is designed without wires or tubes to allow recipients to maintain a productive lifestyle while wearing it. Power is sent from a battery pack worn outside the body through the skin to an implanted coil, control package and backup battery.
The internal battery, about the size of a typical pager, can work on its own for about 30 minutes between charges -- long enough for a patient to take a shower, for example.
Dr. Laman Gray and Dr. Robert Dowling, who trained by implanting the pump in baby cows, performed Monday's landmark surgery.
"I think it's potentially a major step forward in the artificial heart development," said Dr. David Faxon, president of the American Heart Association. |
