"Nano" of the Artificial Hearts may come from Kolkatta after all

IIT Kharagpur has created in artificial heart surgery something akin to a $100 laptop or a Nano!  The organization has devised an artificial heart that could cost around Rs 1 lakh (<$2000 at today's exchange rate).   The current alternative costs Rs 30 lakhs (~$58000).

Total Artificial Heart (TAH) has been created by the team of scientists at IIT-Kharagpur’s school of medical science and technology.  It has been tested on smaller animals and is being tested on goats before it can be used for humans.  The human trials could start in a few months at Medical College and Hospital (MCH), Kolkata – once Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) gives the go-ahead.

5 top cardiac surgeons (Madhusudan Pal, Bhaskar Ukil, Tarun Saha and Kalishankar Das from MCH and Rajiv Narang of AIIMS, Delhi) will conduct the human trials.  Efforts are on to include P. Venugopal – the most prominent Heart Surgeon in India to be part of the team as well.

Who will it help?

This is help those patients:
– whose heart muscles have become so weak that they need immediate transplantation.
–  for whom Angioplasty, stents and even bypass surgery are of no use for such patients because they cannot strengthen muscles.
–  for those for whom it is difficult to find donor organs and even if transplantation is done, the body develops auto rejection and severe medication is required to suppress immune reactions

Please share this with people who maybe in need of such a medical breakthrough.