William DeVries

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William DeVries
DeVries in 2002
Born
William Castle DeVries

(1943-12-19) December 19, 1943 (age 80)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Known forDr. William DeVries and his surgical team replaced a diseased heart with the Jarvik-7, the first permanent artificial heart ever used for a human patient.
Scientific career
Fieldscardiothoracic
surgeon

William Castle DeVries (born December 19, 1943) is an American

Jarvik-7
model.

Early years and medical school

William DeVries was born December 19, 1943, in

Genetic biology. Later on he went to medical school also at the University of Utah and received his M.D. degree in 1970.[4]

By the time he had finished with school, he had already built a family. He married his first wife, Ane Karen,[4] during the last year of college and had four children. During college he was able to hold down three or four jobs and yet he graduated top of his class and received the award for the most outstanding graduate.[5]

It was thanks to one of the jobs that he was involved in surgery. He assisted doctor Willem Johan Kolff during his work and during night he was paid to watch over the animals in the lab. In 1969 after some advice from doctor Keith Reemtsma, he decided to leave Salt Lake City and to start his residency in another hospital. That is also the year in which doctor Denton Cooley attempted his first artificial heart transplant in a patient, in Houston. Doctor Cooley's work would be an inspiration for doctor DeVries, who would later succeed in the transplant of the TAH. After he left Utah, he attended a series of job interviews. The first one was at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The day of the interview, on his way to the hospital, he witnessed a person being stabbed by another man, and helped the victim until he was carried to the emergency room. This episode was probably one of the reasons why he decided not to start his residency in Boston. The second interview he attended was at the Johns Hopkins hospital, but eventually he opted for a residency at the Duke University in North Carolina. At the end of his nine years surgical training, he headed back to Salt Lake City.[6]

The artificial heart

In 1979 Doctor DeVries went back to the University of Utah to become the chairman of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery; there, he used to perform two to five open-heart operations a week.

University of Utah Medical Center started searching for a patient. The group was composed of two cardiologists, a psychiatrist, a nurse, a social worker and DeVries; the decision had to be unanimous.[7]

The first patient

The first patient was a

Humana Inc. offered him to relocate in Louisville, Kentucky; in exchange Cherry offered to finance the next 100 implants.[10]

The Jarvik-7

The Jarvik-7 was a mechanical device, made of polyurethane[4] and aluminium,[11] which was used to replace the two ventricles of a human heart.

Jarvik-7 artificial heart

The pumping action came from air, compressed by an electrical unit located outside of the patient's body.[7] The human-made organ had two separate ventricles grafted with Dacron sleeves to the native atria and great vessels. It was powered by a 400-pound (180 kg[12]) air compressor, connected to the heart, through a tube coming out of the patient body. In order to give the patients the ability to move, it was also invented a portable power console which was the size of a briefcase. Since 1982, 350 patients have used the Jarvik-7 heart model, and its original design is still used for the modern Jarvik-7, although due to propriety passages the device name is now "SynCardia". In October 2004, the Jarvik-7 model was the first medical device to receive a full-FDA approval.[11]

In Louisville, Kentucky

After the offer from Wendell Cherry, DeVries decided to move to Louisville in order to continue with his work on the TAH although he knew that the reason why the Humana Inc. had given him such a generous offer was mainly due to the publicity that this project was to offer them. "Our name is now on every single newspaper in the world. This is the type of advertisement that you cannot buy. As far as I am concerned, you have made your money for the next hundred patients"[13] (Wendell Cherry). And even knowing this, DeVries accepted the deal because it was for medical advancement.

strokes that left him unable to speak. He lived for 620 days after the operation, during which he was able to leave the hospital and do a series of normal activities like traveling, attending a basketball game and even fishing.[11] Over the following years DeVries implanted a total of four artificial-hearts
, and always had someone with a TAH in his facility.

Thanks to his work, the TAH was used in many hospitals, not as a permanent solution for diseased heart patient, but as a "bridge" in order to assist the heart and wait for a final transplant.[7]

In 1983, DeVries received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[14]

During 1987, 49 diseased hearts had been substituted by surgeons all over the world with a Jarvik-7 model.

George Washington University School of Medicine
.

Collections of DeVries papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.[15]

Media attention

Throughout his career, DeVries had to face a series of philosophical, religious, and practical objections to the artificial heart program. The media attention to the first implant was the largest ever directed to a medical case. Never before had a medical innovation aroused such a contentious debate.

New York Times questioned whether the artificial heart research was useful or just a "Dracula" sucking funds away from other programs.[8] DeVries felt that all this attention was slowing his work in Utah, and so decided to leave Salt Lake City for a position in Louisville.[7]
Thanks to the Humana Inc. funds, DeVries implanted another artificial heart at the Humana Human Heart Institute International in a patient called Bill Schroeder. The whole case was followed by the media, and DeVries and the Humana were accused of publicity seeking; Life magazine called it "the Bill Schroeder's show". After the death of DeVries' second patient, the critics began to charge that the mechanical heart brought more complications than benefits. In fact, both Clark and Schroeder never fully recovered from the surgery and eventually died due to complications. DeVries felt that the best way to concede the dilemma was to have people understand that the TAH was not a permanent solution but just a temporary substitution for a diseased heart.

Publications

Further reading

References

  1. ^ a b Kozaryn, Linda D. (2002). "Dr. Willilam C. DeVries, Surgeon". Defend America. Archived from the original on January 5, 2014. Retrieved June 12, 2006.
  2. ISBN 978-1-60714-490-8
    ; pag 389
  3. ^ "Fact Sheet Eagle Scouts". Boy Scouts of America. Archived from the original on February 27, 2008. Retrieved March 3, 2008.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Webster, Bayard (December 3, 1982). "Men in the News; a Pair of Skilled Hands to Guide an Artificial Heart: Robert Kiffler Jarvik". The New York Times. Retrieved November 15, 2012.
  5. ISBN 978-1-60714-490-8
    ; pag 390
  6. ISBN 978-1-60714-490-8
    ; pag 390-391
  7. ^ a b c d e "William Castle DeVries Biography". Encyclopedia of World Biography. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  8. ^
    PMID 14762180
    .
  9. PMID 6690950
    .
  10. ISBN 978-1-60714-490-8
    ; pag 389-393
  11. ^ a b c Heart, Jarvik. "Robert Jarvik on the Jarvik-7". Jarvik Heart. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  12. ^ "Conversione unità di misura". www.dossier.net.
  13. ISBN 978-1-60714-490-8
    ; pag 391
  14. American Academy of Achievement
    .
  15. ^ "William C. DeVries Papers 1946-2002". National Library of Medicine.

Sources

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