Med School Develops Blood Pump to Help Coronary Victims

A Medical School research team has developed a pump which restores blood to the stricken area of the heart after an otherwise fatal attack.

"This pump takes the load off the failing heart and increases the blood going into the heart muscle," Dr. John A. Jacobey, research fellow in Surgery, reported to the annual clinical congress of the American College of Surgeons last Tuesday in Chicago.

Preliminary experiments with animals have been sufficiently encouraging to lead doctors to undertake a large-scale test.

Overcomes Resistance

The pump, synchronized to the heartbeat by means of an electrocardiogram, overcomes resistance in the arterial network and enables small substitute channels to dilate and carry blood which ordinarily would flow through the obstructed coronary artery.

It withdraws blood from the aorta while the heart contracts, lowering the blood pressure within the heart and diminishing the organ's work load. Then, when the heart again relaxes and expands in the course of beating, the blood is swiftly returned to the aorta, restoring normal blood pressure throughout the system.

Dr. Jacobey hopes the pump will stay the mass assault of a heart attack long enough so that the natural repair processes of the heart can take over. In dogs, the pump has to work for only two hours to save an animal with an artificially induced attack from death.