인공심장의 연구개발 동향

초록

The primary function of natural heart is pumping blood to the whole body and the pulmonary circulation. The heart beats 100,000 times a day and around 35 million times a year. Pumping blood by heart supplies nutrients and oxygen to the essential organs and tissues. When the heart function is deteriorated, heart patients suffer from various side effects. Heart transplantation is the only approach in the clinical treatments. However, the number of donor heart is quite small compared to the required heart for transplantation. In 2001, 700,000 deaths are directly caused by heart disease in USA and there are 5,000,000 congestive heart failure patients. Moreover, 550,000 new congestive heart failure patients are diagnosed and 55,000 patients are died of congestive heart failure. There are 200,000 heart disease patients who are out of the conventional medical treatments. Therefore, new approaches substituting failing heart are required for the dying patients. Since late 1950s, the artificial heart development program for substituting natural heart was launched aiming recovering heart function and longer survival of the patients. This paper reviews the brief history of artificial heart development and the current status of artificial hearts which are on clinical application or under development.

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