Artificial Heart

"I've gone through more than any man can stand or bear. " These were the words of James Quinn, who died Monday after living almost 10 months with an artificial heart. His was an arduous survival. Toward the end, he was sick of it - and yet never quite ready to capitulate. As he said last month: "I don't know how to give up. " But he did know how to be one tough hero. He received the heart machine, made by the company Abiomed on Nov. 5. He said he wanted to go back to church (which he did)

Although only one of seven men given artificial hearts in the last year is still alive, heart experts and the device's manufacturer remain optimistic about the machine's future. "We certainly have not given up on artificial hearts by any stretch," said Howard Eisen, medical director of the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Center at Temple University Hospital. Temple is continuing to talk with Abiomed, the Massachusetts company that makes the new kind of fully implantable artificial heart, about testing its AbioCor device, Eisen said.

James "Butch" Quinn, the former baker and Vietnam veteran who received a new type of artificial heart at Hahnemann University Hospital almost 10 months ago, died yesterday. Quinn, of West Philadelphia, suffered a stroke Friday and became "unresponsive" that evening, according to the hospital and Drexel University College of Medicine. Alan Milstein, a Pennsauken lawyer hired by Quinn and his wife, Irene, as an adviser, said Quinn was declared brain dead on Sunday. He was removed from life support - the artificial heart was turned off - yesterday.

It has been eight months since James "Butch" Quinn's ailing heart was replaced with a machine, and he has spent all but three weeks of it in Hahnemann University Hospital. Doctors said that without the artificial heart he almost certainly would have died months ago. Yet because of all that time away from his home in West Philadelphia and disappointing quality of life, Quinn now questions his decision last year to become one of the first humans to test a new type of fully implantable mechanical heart.

On Monday, Hahnemann University Hospital announced that James Quinn, who received an artificial heart there Nov. 5, had been discharged from the hospital a week earlier. Yesterday, Quinn's surgeon revealed that Quinn, a 51-year-old retired baker, had had a small stroke three weeks ago. Louis Samuels, surgical director of the cardiac transplant team, said the hospital had not said anything about Quinn's stroke earlier because the hospital staff needed to "focus and concentrate on James' situation without being distracted.

Sixty days after he received an artificial heart at Hahnemann University Hospital, James Quinn was doing well enough that the staff is planning his transfer to a private nursing facility nearby, the hospital announced yesterday. When Quinn was chosen to be part of a limited trial of the new, completely implantable device, doctors estimated that he had a 70 percent chance of dying of heart failure within a month. Designers of the clinical trial defined a successful outcome as 60 days of survival with improved quality of life, the hospital said.

Ten years ago, James Quinn was a man in pain so deep he wanted to die. "I begged for it," he said. "I prayed for it. " Now he is a man who feels "reborn," so captivated by life that he is awed by a bouquet of flowers, so hungry to live that he exchanged his heart for an unproven machine. What happened in between? Quinn kicked cocaine and battled head-on with the demons he brought home from Vietnam, memories that still give him nightmares. He spent time with his five grandchildren and realized that only made him want more.

About a month ago, doctors at Hahnemann University Hospital calculated that James Quinn had a 70 percent chance of dying within 30 days. Heart surgeon Louis Samuels' gut feeling was that Quinn would be dead in a week. So it was all the more amazing that Quinn, a 51-year-old retired Philadelphia baker, walked into a news conference yesterday, 32 days after he became the fifth person in the world to receive a new type of artificial heart. Quinn was strong enough to spend more than half an hour answering questions with warmth, grace and humor.

A patient at Hahnemann University Hospital has become the fifth in the world to receive a new type of totally implantable artificial heart, the hospital said yesterday. The surgery on the unidentified patient was performed Monday, marking the completion of the first phase of a clinical trial of the device produced by Abiomed Inc. of Danvers, Mass. All the patients who received the device since the first was implanted on July 2 are still alive. Surgeon Louis E. Samuels, who performed the operation, said in a statement that the mechanical heart was performing flawlessly, although the patient was having some breathing problems.

The government has given the go-ahead for a human trial of a new kind of artificial heart, one that can fit completely inside the chest. Battery-operated and less bulky than its predecessors, the device may eventually offer another option for thousands of people who would otherwise die of heart failure each year. Abiomed Inc. announced yesterday that it had received Food and Drug Administration approval to test its mechanical heart, dubbed AbioCor, in five patients. Five medical centers, including Hahnemann University Hospital, will be part of the trial, although Hahnemann will not be the site for the first patient.