British surgeon combines stem cells with artificial heart in world first
From Times Online, September 24, 2009
A British surgeon has saved a dying heart patient by giving him an artificial heart and injecting him with stem cells to rebuild the damaged muscle in a procedure believed to be a world first.
Professor Stephen Westaby, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, led the team that operated on Ioannis Manolopoulos in Thessaloniki, Greece, to fit him with the mechanical pump.
Surgeons then injected his failing heart muscle with six million of his own stem cells in the hope that they would repair the damage.
Artificial hearts -- devices used when someone's heart becomes too weak to push blood around the body -- are used in only a handful of patients in Britain and surgeons say that the use of the patient's own cells extracted from his bone marrow represents the first time the two treatments have ever been combined.
Mr Manolopoulos, who is recovering after the operation two weeks ago, told Sky News: "If things go well, I must go to church and pray because I feel very lucky to get this device and have the chance of a normal life."
He had been in hospital for four months after at least two heart attacks and other treatment had failed to improve his condition.
Existing pneumatic heart implants are intended only to be used as a stop-gap during transplant operations or while patients await a donor organ.
Professor Westaby has pioneered the use of mechanical pumps in patients suffering from heart failure, but the NHS does not typically fund the £60,000 devices in these cases. Instead surgeons rely on charity funding -- or travel abroad to implant pumps in countries where governments are prepared to fund the treatment.
The Jarvik mechanical device will divert blood away from the damaged pumping chamber to allow his heart to repair itself.Professor Westaby said that heart pumps, with or without stem cells, could save the lives of 12,000 patients with serious heart failure each year.
He added: "I am very frustrated that all the work that I have done back home in the UK has to be translated into patient care in other countries. We have helped to develop implantation programmes in France, Greece and Japan. It's time we did it in the UK.
"The economics in the health service are the problem. So many patients could benefit that the costs would be substantial."
The stem cells -- often called "master cells" due to their ability to grow into different types of tissue -- kick-start a recovery by building new muscle and releasing chemicals that attract new blood vessels into the damaged areas.
Professor Christos Papakonstantinou, heart surgeon at the Ahepa University Hospital in Thessaloniki, who helped carry out the operation, added: "We hope the combination of stem cells and pumps will enable patients to enjoy life for many years."
The Department of Health said: "Before making such technology more widely available as an indefinite long-term treatment in end-stage heart failure, the NHS needs to ensure there is clear evidence of benefit.
"We will carefully consider all new evidence on heart pumps which is published."