SA MAN RECEIVES ‘BERLIN HEART’

DOCTORS in Cape Town have implanted an artificial heart in a 60-year-old male patient in the first operation of its kind to be performed in South Africa. The 10-member surgical team left the patient’s old heart in place and stitched the artificial heart onto it. The man-made heart – known as the “Berlin Heart” and developed in Germany over the past 25 years – is made of polyurethane and has two ventricles. Surgeons said patients in Germany were still alive two years after receiving an artificial heart. – AFP