Man lives 555 days without a heart
While waiting for a human heart transplant, Stan Larkin lived 555 days without the organ at all.
To people on the street, the 25-year-old Ypsilanti, Michigan resident looked like a typical young dad.
He took his three toddlers to the park and spent time with his younger brother, Dominique.
What most did not see was the gray backpack Larkin carried.
That bag held the power source for an artificial heart pumping inside his chest.
Larkin’s natural heart was removed in November 2014.
Surgeons replaced it with a device that let him live at home instead of inside a hospital while he waited for a donor heart.
The transplant finally took place in May of this year.
He is recovering at the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center.
Doctors expect he could return home as early as next week.
“Most people would be scared to go so long with [an artificial heart], but I just want to tell them that you have to go through the fear, because it helps you,” Larkin said.
“I’m going home so fast after the transplant because it helped me stay healthy before the transplant,” he added.
At any time, about 4,000 patients nationwide wait for human heart transplants, the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network reports.
Many with end-stage heart failure may wait months or even years for a suitable donor heart, said Dr. Billy Cohn.
Cohn is a cardiovascular surgeon and director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Texas Heart Institute.
“Many of these patients have hearts that are so weak, the kidneys, liver and other critical organs will fail while they are waiting,” Cohn said.
He added that many would die without some form of support, such as an artificial heart.
‘A machine was going to be my heart’
Larkin first learned his heart had trouble nine years earlier after he collapsed during a basketball game.
Doctors diagnosed him with a genetic heart condition called familial cardiomyopathy.
His brother, Dominique, then 24, was later found to have the same disorder.
The condition stretches the heart muscle and enlarges the chamber area, preventing efficient blood pumping.
The specific type affecting Stan and Dominique is arrhythmogenic dysplasia.
That form causes arrhythmias and failure on both sides of the heart, said Dr. Jonathan Haft.
Haft is a cardiac surgeon at the University of Michigan who operated on the brothers.
“It’s an awful condition to have,” Haft said. “But the technology available and the technology that is evolving in the field of heart failure is very exciting. … The total artificial heart falls into that category.”
Both brothers advanced to heart failure and cardiogenic shock.
They received artificial heart devices in late 2014.
Dominique stayed in the hospital with his device for six weeks before getting a human heart transplant.
Larkin, however, was healthy enough to live outside the hospital with his device, Haft said.
“I was shocked when the doctors started telling me that I could live without a heart in my body and that a machine was going to be my heart. Just think about it – a machine,” Larkin said.
‘It feels like a real heart’
Patients have lived long periods with artificial hearts before, but Larkin became the first in Michigan to go home with a portable device.
The SynCardia temporary artificial heart replaced his failing heart, including its chambers and four valves.
Two tubes exited the left side of his body beneath the ribcage.
They connected the artificial heart to a 13-pound machine called the Freedom Driver.
The driver, carried in a backpack, powered the artificial heart.
It delivered compressed air pumps into the heart’s ventricles, allowing blood to circulate.
“Stan was very active and did an immaculate job taking care of himself and taking care of the equipment used to keep him alive,” Haft said.
With his life-saving backpack, Larkin played pick-up basketball.
He spent time with his children and rode in cars with friends.
“It’s just like a real heart,” Larkin said. “It’s just in a bag with tubes coming out of you, but other than that, it feels like a real heart. … It felt just like a backpack with books in it, like if you were going to school.”
Larkin’s mother, Voncile McCrae, often helped change bandages covering the tube exit sites.
She said they had to be careful to prevent infection.
“We had to be careful so that he wouldn’t get an infection,” McCrae said, chuckling about how she had been scared to touch the tubes and handle the Freedom Driver machine. “Now, I’m a pro.”
‘An amazing brother’
The device in Larkin’s chest highlights advances since the first self-contained artificial heart implant in 2001, said Dr. Laman Gray.
Gray holds the Jewish Hospital chair in cardiovascular surgery at the University of Louisville.
He was among the surgeons who performed that first procedure and has watched the field closely.
“I think there’s good science here, and there have been really great advancements in this area,” Gray said. “We’re making great progress, and people are living normal lives. There’s definitely a place for total artificial hearts and a need for them.”
Dominique said he and Stan are grateful they received the care they needed and that both survived.
“I have an amazing brother,” Dominique said. “He has been here with me since the beginning and has never let me down. … I’m blessed to have him in my life.”