LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The first female patient to receive a total artificial heart implant got to go home from a Louisville hospital Monday.
According to a press release from UofL Health, Michelle Giles was in end-stage heart failure earlier this year when she was referred to the Advanced Heart Failure Therapies program at Jewish Hospital.
"[The doctor] said there's only one other thing we can do, and that's the mechanical heart," Giles said. "I said, 'Well, I trust you to do whatever,' so I took his word for it and here I am."
Giles underwent an eight-hour procedure in September to receive the Aeson bioprosthetic total artificial heart implant and the surgery was a success!
"It gave us one more day with her and when tomorrow gets here, we'll say we got another day," Giles' husband, Tim, said.
PHOTOS | Louisville surgeons perform first total artificial heart implant
Jewish Hospital is only the second hospital in the country to perform the clinical trial procedure, which has only been approved for four hospitals in the nation.
According to UofL Health, the artificial device is intended to be a bridge to a heart organ transplant. Doctors said around 3,500 patients are waiting for a heart transplant surgery, but most of them don't get one because there aren't enough donors.
They said innovations like the Aeson bioprosthetic artificial heart implant are necessary to help find transplant substitutes so more people can get the surgery.
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