| KAMPEN, Netherlands (Netherlands National News Agency) – August 29, 2007 – After he invented the first successful artificial kidney in the world, in 1947, Leiden-born medical pioneer and inventor Willem Johan Kolff started to design an artificial heart in the garage of the Kampen City Hospital. Sixty years later, a modern state-of-the-art artificial heart returns to Kampen to honor the father of artificial organs.
“Kampen is the birthplace of a development that has saved millions of lives globally. This is only a modest token of gratitude,” said a SynCardia spokesman, the artificial heart company from Tucson, Arizona, that presented the heart.
The “homecoming” of the artificial heart celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first Kolff-heart ever (1957) and the 25th anniversary of the first human permanent artificial heart implantation (1982).
Willem Johan Kolff, 96, developed the first artificial kidney in 1943 in Kampen. He left for America in 1950, where he became world famous as the most important pioneer in artificial organs. In a hospital in Cleveland, the internist implanted the first self-built artificial heart in a dog that lived on it for 90 minutes. Kolff had started this project in Kampen.
After a quarter of a century of seemingly endless implantations in sheep and calves, in 1982, 61-year-old dentist Dr. Barney Clark became the first human to receive a permanent artificial heart developed by the Kolff team. The implantation made headlines for weeks all over the world. Clark lived on his artificial heart for 112 days. Since 1982, 667 people globally have received an artificial heart of a Kolff-type.
Kolff developed the artificial heart, in 1982 called the Jarvik-7, in his lab in Salt Lake City. The CardioWest TAH-t artificial heart of SynCardia, now coming to Kampen, is the descendant of the Jarvik-7 heart.
“The name of the heart has changed over the years, but the essentials of the technique have never changed, only improved,” says Willem Kolff Foundation President and Founder Dr. J. Jacobze.
According to Jacobze, only a few people know that the artificial heart was a Dutch invention by origin: “That’s why the return of the artificial heart to Kampen is a historic event. The artificial heart is coming home.”
An artificial heart implantation was never done in the Netherlands. In the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein experiments were carried out during the 1980s and 1990s by a former Kolff co-worker, cardiologist Henri van Swieten. He now is the head of cardiothoracic surgery of the UMC St Radboud in Nijmegen. According to Van Swieten, ‘technical imperfections’ of the artificial heart made doctors reluctant back then and the experiment was terminated. Although the artificial heart has improved, Van Swieten doesn’t think an implantation will happen in Holland in the near future.
Kampen is proud of its famous son, who only worked in that town for nine years. The town made him the very first honorary citizen in the history of Kampen in 1970. Kolff, who kept working till a very high age, received 127 international awards and accolades and 13 honorary doctorates for his achievements. In 60 years, the work of Kolff has become a billion dollar industry, a technical and medical specialism in itself that is - according to American statistics - responsible for saving over 20 million lives in the world.
Kolff is now 96 years old and living near Philadelphia. Because of his vulnerability at such a high age, he can’t attend the return of “his” artificial heart to Kampen.
(c) ANP 2007 all rights reserved
About the CardioWest™ temporary Total Artificial
Heart
The CardioWest™ TAH‑t is a pneumatic, biventricular, implantable bridge-to-transplant
system for full cardiac replacement, taking the place of the failing heart in
patients at imminent risk of death. The device offers full circulatory support,
the shortest blood path and exposure to artificial surfaces, and the highest level
of cardiac output when compared with other artificial heart systems previously
tested. With the CardioWest™ TAH‑t, patients become better candidates for
eventual transplantation and have post-transplant survival rates equal to that
of non-device cardiac recipients.
About SynCardia Systems
Founded in 2001, SynCardia Systems is the developer of biomechanical cardiac replacement
and assist devices. Its CardioWest™ temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH‑t)
is designed for severely ill patients with end-stage congestive heart failure.
The device serves as an in-hospital bridge-to-transplantation for patients at
imminent risk of death. SynCardia Systems is based in Tucson, Arizona and is on
the Web at http://www.syncardia.com.
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