AARP Hearing Center
Belinda Smith needed a new heart. Congestive heart failure had reduced the pumping power of her own ticker by 90 percent. “I needed a heart transplant, but I couldn’t wait that long,” recalls Smith, now 50, a mother of four from Dayton, Ohio. “Doctors gave me less than a year to live.” New hearts aren’t easy to come by. There are about 4,000 people awaiting transplants, but just 2,500 donor hearts are available each year in the U.S. For people like Smith, though, there’s new hope: a battery-powered implant that plugs into the wall at night. Smith’s life was saved by one of these left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), which doctors installed in her chest in 2017. “It does the work my heart can’t do, pumping blood out into my body,” Smith explains. “I can do almost everything I did before — I just can’t get the cord and batteries wet. I have a waterproof bag for taking a shower, but I can’t go swimming.”
Her LVAD is the size of a D battery and weighs less than a pound.
During the day it runs on a battery pack attached to a power cord extending through her chest wall. “I carry two tote bags whenever I leave my apartment — with my controller, extra batteries, a car charger and an extra pump. If the batteries ever run out, I’ve got less than five minutes to plug in new ones,” she notes. “When I’m going to sleep, I plug myself into a wall outlet with a 25-foot power cord.” LVADs pump blood continuously; users don’t have a heartbeat. “You have to wear a medical-alert bracelet so EMTs don’t think you’re dead or try to give you CPR. That would crush the pump,” Smith says. “But I can hear the sound of the pump when I put my head on my arm at night. It purrs.”
Smith hopes to get a spot on a heart-transplant list soon. But for thousands of adults with heart failure, an LVAD is their future. The Food and Drug Administration last fall approved the first LVAD as a “destination therapy” for indefinite use for people with end-stage heart failure who aren’t candidates for a heart transplant.
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