A continuous-flow artificial heart:

Frazier and his team have implanted pairs of commercially available ventricular-assist de-vices* into calves that had their hearts removed. The researchers say the de-vices* were able to pump blood and respond to the animals' needs based on their activities. "You put this in cattle and they stand up and moo and eat and wonder why everyone is looking at them so weird," says William Cohn, a collaborator on the research and director of minimally invasive surgical technology at the Texas Heart Institute.

...Cohn hopes that in the future, artificial heart technology will become much safer and easier to use, broadening the potential pool of patients. "It wouldn't surprise me if at the 2050 Olympics, there were standard and modified [competitor] divisions," he says.

Ahhh, life in the twenty-first century.

* Note: misspelling deliberate. For some weird reason, MT won't allow me to create a post with the word "dev i ces" in it. The script actually breaks.

I'm wondering if these hearts will really work as well as beat-type units, since the arteries also contract and relax in response to the heart beat. (Your pulse is actually the contraction of the artery your finger is pressed against, not the heart beat).

The pulse is important for helping push the blood out of the main arteries and into the capillaries.

devices

So.. why was that hard?

Very funny, Jane. But I didn't say it didn't allow a comment with that word--I said it didn't allow a post. Though your end run might work, it doesn't explain what the problem is.

Mike
I'm not sure our circulatory system needs the pulse of our heart. It just is. There must be some range of pressure that will move the blood, without that pulsating. When they use a heart / lung machine it has a peristaltic pump, which supplies a constant flow, I believe. I'm not sure if there is a maximum time limit of how long you can be supplied like that.

Heart Doctors? Surgical Nurses? EMTs? Any answers?

Neat. I wonder if a continuous-flow artificial lung would work?

What about a small modification so that oxygen can be bubbled into the blood directly? No space suit needed!

(OK, it wouldn't work because your lungs would rupture. Maybe while they are in there they could put in some kind of lung lining?)

I wasn't sure if you could tell how I cheated to post the offending word "devices" or not, Rand. But it's odd to see that it rejects the word spelled out in the normal way.

I usually use that trick for things like this: ראש השנה

It was kind of obvious, because I get email notification of all comments. In ASCII...

Hmmm.. Viagra

Yes, it really does work :)