Video: The Doctors Who Made the No-Pulse Heart

living dead? ... the Z word ! ^^

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bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

PS: i like how the beep stop means "life" and not "death" at the end of the video ^^

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bored? lets go mine the stars... ^^

Meh. Very little info about the continuous flow heart. Less of a documentary and more like a propaganda ad.

This brings up a lot of issues. How do you monitor their well-being without a pulse? If someone is unconscious in the street and not breathing, how can you tell if they are dead or not without the pulse? How will hospitals monitor their vitals with only a flat-line?

Next, they should work on a way to oxygenate the blood without having to use the lungs.

Ok, the beating heart problem has been fixed. Now we need to deal with breathing, eating, and sleeping. Especially eating and sleeping. Both are a huge waste of time that could be spent for something more productive. Like playing Skyrim.

Does the pump only work for mostly sedentary activity, or would it adjust blood flow when running/exercising/etc.? I can see a serious impairment to the quality of life depending on the answer to this.

The reason Barney begged to be allowed to die is because of something really cool about blood.

Get a glass microscope slide.
Glue two copper wires in parallel lines onto the slide.
Attach the two wires to a small 9V battery, the kind in most smoke detectors.
Using a diabetic needle lance, place a few drops of blood from your finger on the slide between the wires (in an electric field).
FIREWORKS!

Of corse the QRS's voltage is about 1/3 volt, but that's enough to knock BPG (DPG to old folks) off hemoglobin, and CO2 as well.

In other words, without a rhythmic shock to the blood, the blood is not properly oxygenated in the right ventricle. Without properly oxygenated blood, life just isn't worth living.
I'm not sure why the left ventricle full of blood is shocked, but there's doubtless a good reason. I just haven't figured it out yet.

Of course, it's not fireworks you see in the blood between the two wires hooked up to the battery on the microscope slide. The blood effervesces as gas comes off hemoglobin and other blood components. Blue blood effervesces, too, and mostly CO2 comes off (different gases depending upon anode or cathode) just before blood is injected into the lungs.

How would the device know to pump blood faster or slower depending on the activities performed by the patient? Any one got any idea.