heart pump

If former vice president Richard B. Cheney's experience is similar to that of other patients who have heart pumps implanted, he has a better than 50-50 chance of surviving two years.

(Texas Children's Hospital) The wait is over for 16-year-old Francesco "Frank" De Santiago. On Jan. 29, De Santiago received a donor heart in a nine-hour transplant operation at Texas Children's Heart Center De Santiago made news last October as the first child ever discharged from a pediatric hospital with an implanted mechanical heart pump, or ventricular assist device (VAD).

Until then, pediatric patients with VADs remained in the hospital, often in ICU, while awaiting a donor heart.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Doctors say that a new type of heart pump greatly improves survival of people with severe heart failure.

It could become the first one of these devices to be widely used as a permanent treatment....