Italian doctors save baby with world’s smallest artificial heart

Last month, Italian doctors saved the life of a 16-month-old boy by implanting the world's smallest artificial heart until a donor was available for a heart transplant.

The doctors at Rome's Bambino Gesu hospital made the successful operation public this week.

The child was suffering from dilated myocardiopathy, a heart muscle disease, and had already undergone the insertion of — and subsequent infection surrounding — a mechanical pump to support the function of his own heart.

"The device, a titanium pump weighing only 11 grams and that can endure a flow of up to 1.5 litres per minute, was used in an emergency case of a 16-month-old infant suffering from dilated myocardiopathy with a serious infection of the ventricular assistance device that had been implanted previously," surgeon Antonio Amodeo told the AFP.

Comparatively, an adult-sized artificial heart weighs 900 grams. The device was invented by the creator of the first permanent total artificial heart, American Robert Jarvik, and had been previously tested only on animals.

Doctors hope that devices like this can one day be a permanent fix.

"From a surgical point of view, this was not really difficult. The only difficulty that we met is that the child was operated on several times before," Amodeo told Reuters television.

"The patient was in our intensive care unit since one month of age. So he was a mascot for us, he was one of us," the doctor added.

"Every day, every hour, for more than one year he was with us. So when we had a problem we couldn't do anything more than our best."

The baby was kept alive on the artificial heart for 13 days before receiving a heart transplant. He is now doing well.