Medical advances have allowed people to live longer with more serious conditions. One area that has taken great strides is cardiology. Surgical Director of Cardiac Transplantation at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center Dr. Margarita Camacho told NJ Today Senior Correspondent Desiree Taylor about advancements with devices that have prolonged patients’ lives and offered them a good quality of life.
Camacho said one of the most interesting advances recently is the development of a very small heart pump called an LVAD, short for left ventricle assist device. “The devices as recently as eight years ago were very big and clunky and not so durable. They’d last maybe a year and a half,” she said. “Then they developed the smaller one that Dick Cheney got which is about the size of your hand. And that we expect will last five years or more. But very recently a much smaller device went into clinical trials and those trials just completed.”
She explained that the FDA advisory panel advised the FDA to approve the device, which fits in the palm of your hand. Camacho said it will likely last longer and hopefully have fewer complications than current devices.
The devices are truly lifesavers. “These LVADs are very important because we estimate there’s about 75,000 to 100,000 Americans that could use a transplant. We can only do no more than 2,400 a year and that’s been the case for the last 25 years because of donor shortage,” Camacho explained.
Once an LVAD is implanted, Camacho said the patient sees the benefits and can live a normal life. She said she’s had patients who played 18 holes of golf, traveled throughout the United States and rode motorcycles.
“The most important thing is these people would not be alive. They would die within a few days, weeks, maybe months,” Camacho said. “And this LVAD has allowed them to not only have a good quality of life but to survive and enjoy time with the family, either while waiting for a transplant or as an alternative to transplants.”
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The LVAD takes over the work of the left ventricle, which is the main pumping chamber of the heart. Camacho said there are two groups of patients who are eligible to get an LVAD. “Those patients who are on the transplant list that are waiting but are dying and they need something to keep them alive until a heart organ is available,” she said. “So that’s one group of patients. The bigger group is a group that is not eligible for a heart transplant, due either to age or other medical illnesses and so that’s the other, bigger group.”
Camacho said the youngest patient she implanted with an LVAD was a 17-year-old boy who was waiting for a heart transplant. She said he went on to have the transplant and is doing well. The oldest patient of Camacho’s to get an LVAD was a 78-year-old man who was dying after having a massive heart attack. She said the man lived into his 80s and drove his brother to Atlantic City twice a month.
Heart transplants provide the most benefits for patients and last for the longest amount of time, according to Camacho, who said LVADs are expected to last between five and 10 years while heart transplants can last between 10 and 20 years. She has performed the most heart transplants of any female doctor in the country and is either number one or two of all such doctors in the U.S. “There aren’t too many women in this field interestingly enough,” she said. “Hopefully there will be more in the future.”
One patient Camacho worked with was Montclair State University student Ryan Miller, who was the subject of the series Ryan’s Heart on NJ Today in April. Camacho said Miller needed an LVAD prior to receiving his heart transplant.
Camacho said spreading the word about organ donation is important. “I think people need to know about it not just because it’s a wonderful story to know about but also to consider increasing organ donation. Because when you see lives can be saved from a donor it just really hits home,” she said. “It makes you realize … you should sign that drivers license and really give that life to other people.”
Related: Ryan’s Heart: MSU Student Chronicles His Heart Transplant Journey