Heartless: Man Alive Without Heart Or Pulse

Posted By: JacobSloan Feb 1, 2012

heartlessPerhaps in the future, we’ll spend our youth — i.e. the first hundred or so years of our lives — with a heart and a pulse, and our next couple hundred without them. DesignTaxi writes:

Two doctors from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.

The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.

If you listened with a stethoscope, you wouldn’t hear a heartbeat. If you examined [the] arteries, there’s no pulse. Hooked up to an EKG, [he’d] be flat-lined.”

JacobSloan

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  • chinagreenelvis

    I wonder what happens if you crank up the speed…

  • Nunzio X

    Dick fuckin’ Cheney is living proof that you don’t need a heart.

    • Rex Vestri

       Dammit, ya beat me to it!  I immediately thought of that cocksucker when I read this story.

      • NicePeopleSwallow

        Cocksucker here, and I rather take offense to that comparison…

    • Eric_D_Read

      I hope this doesn’t mean there will be a DC-1000 coming out anytime soon.

    • phunkychic666

      yeah didn’t dick cheney accomplish this many years ago??? 
       

      • Simiantongue

         I don’t think submitting to a procedure can be called an “accomplishment”, as such, on behalf of the person undergoing it. But Dick Cheney does have left ventricular assist device that is similar to this. It’s a single pump device to assist flow.

  • Crash_dt

    This isn’t news – there’s a machine called Big Blue that can do that. Problem is its a couple hundred pounds. Where is the source for this? What is this guy’s name? Why is there no news release (that I could find) about it on the Texas Heart Institute website?

  • justagirl

    think about it.  you need a pulse to live.

    • Tamar Black

      Well, apparently not

      • justagirl

        er..  to live longer than a few weeks..  i didn’t read all the links, but, i think the pulse pushes the blood to all the capillaries.  just my guess.

        • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

          like nunzio said, dick cheney has had one for a long while now

          • justagirl

            wtf is dick cheney?

          • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

            its exactly what it sounds like.

          • justagirl

            dick chainy?  ooh..  i am liking…

          • http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

            well thats cus you’re justagirl; something like half the population would be uncomfortable with it

          • justagirl

            heh!  yeah..

          • Justabitch

            You didn’t read the article completely but you comment… stupid bitch.

          • justagirl

            ooh you’re hungry bitch?  …me, too.

          • True

            dont worry she always has the dumbest comments ever. its a thing

  • Irving Greenfield

    Well, i figure the guy will die eventually anyway, just like the guy with the Jarvik artificial heart. Just an experiment, but i guess he will get some extra time.

  • Tiffanygin420

    The pulse is just the pressure exerted by the heart through the blood vessels when the valves open and close. So no you don’t need a pulse to live, you just need oxygen being pumped through the body, being carried by the blood to all the parts and then picking up the waste material and filtering it out the capillaries and then back to the lungs to pick up oxygen again.

  • Jon Montroy

    that’s heartless

  • Eric_D_Read

    I guess that settles it. Future cyborgs will be less like Terminator, more like Robocop.

  • Calypso_1

    Take a look a VAD’s (Ventricular Assist Devices) they are essentially the same thing, bypassing a failed heart, but are external and used for patients waiting for a heart transplant.  Some of these are pulsatile but most use continuous flow centrifugal pumps and these people don’t have a pulse either.  The only thing that distinguishes this is using that type of pump internally as an artificial heart once the organ is already removed. 

  • John Finch7

    and children are dying because they need a $2 injection?????

  • Simiantongue

    A 3 minute video showing and explaining the procedure. Gets a little graphic but is fascinating.

    http://vimeo.com/33741794

  • SF2K01

    The question is when does he become a zombie? How do we know when he’s really dead?

  • Hadrian999

    i would be pranking doctors endlessly if i were him

  • Someonesname

    THAT GUY LOOKS FUCKING SCARY… AHHH