So as not to hijack the “Dick Cheney has no pulse” thread I’ll make this a GQ.
The current generation of artificial hearts do not ‘pump’ blood like a biological heart but they ‘whir’- they keep a continual stream of blood going rather than in beats. For this reason the recipients have no pulse. (Robert Tools, who survived for 5 months on one in 2001, said that it was the most bizarre thing not having a heartbeat and that his wife was able to hear the mechanical whir when she put her head to his chest.)
So a morbid question but something I’ve wondered: what would happen to the body when somebody with a fully self contained artificial heart like this dies? The blood is continuing to circulate, but at the same point the lungs aren’t working so it’s not being oxygenated. Would the body remain warm longer or would it take longer for lividity to set in- what would the effect of circulating unoxygenated blood be?
Well, in case you are wondering, that artificial heart is NOT recovered & reused.
It might be interesting to have a market in used, reconditioned hearts (‘factory reconditioned, as good as new – only used for 5 months, by an old man who hardly ever went anywhere’), but neither the makers, the doctors & hospitals, nor the insurance companies would approve.
on a related issue…
I found it a bit macabre when a doctor told me that my grandmother’s pacemaker will still be ticking away with a perfect beat underground , even after her body decomposes.
My father-in-law had an implanted automatic cardioverter defibrillator/pacemaker. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, near the end of his life, we had to remind his cardiologist to shut down the automatic defribrillation part of the device to ensure that when his heart finally stopped when he died, the device didn’t start repeatedly shocking him in an attempt to restart his heart. :eek:
On the other hand if somebody is being cremated the mortician has to extract things like pacemakers, artificial hearts, metal plates or rods, etc before the body cremated.
I don’t think that’s quite accurate.
As the heart muscle decomposes, it will go away, and the pacemaker will no longer have a completed circuit to deliver it’s electrical pulses.
A story that isn’t funny except that it is: a good friend of mine’s father, Burt, had one of those devices for the last few years. One day he was in a KFC ordering a meal (fried food being completely verboten but that didn’t stop him) and he got halfway through when he had a heart attack and the device went off. The exchange went something like
Burt: I’d like a two piece meal original with AAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" and he’s also vibrating and clearly being shocked.
People in line: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
The only person at all composed was Burt’s lady friend who called 911 and tried to explain to the clerks at the same time what was happening. Per the lady friend, a male clerk and a man from line helped him into a chair to await the ambulance, and no sooner had they done this than a woman who was next in line very calmly stepped forward and said “I’d like a number 3 original with Pepsi… and I’m kind of in a rush if you could speed it up”, to which another person pointed at the man who had helped Burt and said “He was here first!”, to which the woman responded something to the effect of “Well he clearly isn’t in a hurry and I was next!” and it became a bickerfest.
(Burt didn’t die- he was in the hospital a couple of days but lived for several more months. That unit was deactivated as part of a DNR order in his final days.)
I was hearing Monty Python voices while reading the above…had me in stitches.
“Clearly I shouldn’t have to wait 'till he finishes his myocardial infarction to get my extra crispy with rehydrated potatoes on the side, now should I”