An estimated 4.7 million Americans have congestive heart failure, which kills about 300,000 people each year. Right now, patients have three options, Long said, when the heart failure becomes severe: They can get a heart transplant (only 2,000 heart transplants were done in the United States last year; the organs are simply not available), rely on a VAD of some sort to boost the heart's ability to function, or make peace with the fact that they're dying.

Many people who would not qualify for a heart transplant because of age or medical conditions qualify for an LVAD, including Larsen and Herb Koehler, who both talked of the difference in their lives since they received LVAD implants.

Much of the seed money for development of the Utah-born VAD came from the Heart and Lung Research Foundation at LDS Hospital, while later grants from the National Institutes of Health have helped keep the project alive.

Utah's long history with the artificial heart began in 1982 when the Jarvik-7 total artificial heart was implanted in Barney Clark at University Hospital, Long said. It had "limited success" and later generations moved more toward assist devices that would help the patient's own heart. The new design involved not only LDS Hospital doctors, but work by bioengineers at the University of Utah, he said. It was the startup company founded by those collaborators that was bought up by WorldHeart.

Khanwilkar spoke about perseverance. "Everyone said that it could not be done — that it would take a more than a decade and several tens of millions to get to clinical trials. They were right, actually," he said. But they did it anyway.

---

E-mail: lois@desnews.com