No Pulse, No Problem

A team at the Texas Heart Institute achieved a remarkable medical first by replacing a patient’s failing heart with a mechanical device capable of keeping blood circulating without producing a traditional heartbeat. Instead of mimicking the rhythmic pumping of a human heart, the turbine-like implant uses continuously spinning rotors to create a steady, unbroken flow of blood, more like water moving through a hose than the familiar pulse-driven system of the body.

The patient, Craig Lewis, was a 55-year-old man suffering from Amyloidosis, a condition in which abnormal proteins accumulate and eventually cause organ failure. Following the procedure, his blood continued to circulate effectively, but without any detectable pulse or heartbeat. Doctors reported that when listening to his chest, the only sound was a faint mechanical hum. Dr. Billy Cohn notes, by conventional measures used to assess life, such as pulse and heartbeat, the patient might appear clinically dead. Yet the case demonstrated something extraordinary, the human body can, under certain conditions, sustain life without a pulse at all.