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Show Artificial heart testing facility is new U center Construction of the new Artificial Heart Test and Evaluation Facility in the University's Research Park is proceeding on schedule toward its target date of Dec. 1 When completed, the facility will be used to test artificial human hearts with the eventual goal of helping to develop reliable man-made hearts for use in about ten years. The new facility is one of only two centers of its kind, the other bc.ng located at the Illinois Institute of Technology Tech-nology in Chicago. The two facilities w,l test and evaluate many of the artificial Lans developed in the United States. Tire Utah facility will provide in addition ,o a construction cost of $2.5 million, about $1.5 million annually in salaries, equipment and supplies to the economy of the state. The new building will contain about 50 000 square feet of space on three floors Research animals and bu.ld.ng s"e iceswdl be housed on the f.rst floor with surgery, intensive care and other (Continued on page 4, column ) Medical research center will test man-made hearts (Continued from page 1) medical services contained on the second floor. The building is being financed through the Kennecott Copper Corporation, the Church of Jesus Je-sus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Zions First National Bank. Robert A. Fowler Associated Architects Ar-chitects of Salt Lake City designed de-signed the building. Home Construction Con-struction Corporation of Salt Lake City is the contractor. The new facility is - due in large part to the efforts of Vice President for Research William S. Partridge. According to Reed B. Ilarker, director of the new facility, Dr. Partridge deserves a large measure of the credit for the center's existence. Mr. Marker Mar-ker credited Dr. Partridge with being the "pusher and driver for the building." The facility will work closely with both University Hospital and the LDS Hospital. Dr. Russell Rus-sell M. Nelson, chairman of the Division of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at LDS Hospital Hospi-tal will serve as director of the new facility's medical department. depart-ment. According to Mr. Harker, the facility has been in the mill for at least two years. The first contract for the building's construction con-struction was let in December of 1969. Mr. Harker became the facility's director in July of 1970 after having served with the space program where he was involved with the Mariner Program Pro-gram for exploration of Mars. Mr. Harker recently returned from a visit to Washington, D.C., where he discussed the operations opera-tions of the new Utah facility with officials there. "I went to discuss the exact tests that will be performed in the coming year and their scheduling. Funding and operations requires a very careful understanding of things needed to make the tests acceptable accept-able to the scientific community," commu-nity," Mr. Harker stated. He went on to say that planning is going on which will decide what personnel of the facility will be doing in periods of time as small as one day or even four hours in the coming year. According to Mr. Harker, a workable artificial human heart has several advantages over transplanting trans-planting a live human heart. The greatest advantage lies in the area of availability. When artificial artifi-cial hearts come into general use, a patient will not have to face the proposition of waiting for a donor of a human heart. The artificial heart also avoids to a great extent the moral question of whether or not it is proper to remove the heart of one person and place it in the body of another. Closely tied to the moral questions are other more practical problems such as when is a person legally dead and who should get the heart of a donor. The latter question arises from the simple fact that at the present time there are more patients needing hearts than there are donors to provide them. When asked how soon it will be before artificial hearts will be available for common use, Mr. Harker said that last year scientists scien-tists roughly estimated about ten years would be needed to make such hearts available. Mr. Harker stated that the question of whether or not artificial hearts will be available by that time depends entirely upon the rate of technological advance. Immense problems face the developers of the artificial hearts that may eventually be tested at the University. Some of the problems involve materials, device de-vice life, wear, absorption of liquids, size, heat dissipation, energy en-ergy source and weight. Mr. Harker Har-ker pointed out that these are problems which are faced in the development of any machine, emphasizing that an artificial heart is exactly that: a machine. Mr. Harker outlined the program pro-gram of the first test to be conducted after the facility opens. The testing will concern "the clinical application of a new oxygenator for use in open heart surgery. An intra-aortic balloon which is used for temporary tem-porary assistance to a failing heart" will also be tested. "These will be used by local physicians in the LDS and University Uni-versity hospitals on patients requiring re-quiring assistance from such devices." de-vices." Mr. Harker noted that in January, Jan-uary, 1972, the facility will be doing the "engineering and medical med-ical evaluation of two new devices de-vices which will be examined for possible clinical use." |