[Cardiac transplant and artificial heart. Historical data]

After mentioning the importance of implementing these techniques, frecuently used both in USA and Spain, he refers to his experience on 70 dogs since the end of the 50's in the last century. Not only does he refer to the heterotopic transplant, on the neck, undertaken to test the importance of the denervation, maintenance of the viability of the organ using hypothermia, and the anatomopathologic study of the inmunologic rejection, but also to the orthotopic transplant, this is the replacement of one heart by other, using extracorporeal circulation. He refers to the first transplant practiced by Hardy, on the 23rd of January 1964, in which he unsuccessfully used the heart of a chimpanzee and to the one performed by Barnard the 3rd of December 1967, with a survival span of 18 days. He mentions current techniques to preserve the replacement heart, using POPS, as well as the procedures to avoid the rejection and the clinical experience in Spain until now, including the obtained results. Thereafter, he makes a detailed description of the Liotta's artificial heart, the Jarvik 7 (Symbyon, CardioWest), which provided a survival period of 112 days. Also he refers to the Jarvik 2000, the model of DeBakey, the Novacor, the AbioCor, explaining the experience achieved with them, ending with the description with the model proposed by Schenk, in Cleveland, the MagScrew TAH.