Hitting My Stride IIII

[DonH]

I think we may be confusing devices here. LVADs can go much longer than 14 days. in fact, here's some quick survival stats from one study:

LVAD implantation, survival at 30 days was 94%, at 1 year 78%, at 2 year 71%, and at 4 years 45%

Patients can live a somewhat normal life outside the hospital with battery backup as they wait for a transplant.

The Impella Heart Pump on the other hand is a more short-term bridge - that is more primary to pumping versus an "assist" to the heart with low injection fraction.

The FDA has approved use of Impella for 6 hours, but current data has revealed off-label use in patients for a variable duration, ranging from a few hours to an average of 12 days, with the longest recorded duration at 35 days in a single documented case.

Sadly, transplant is often the ultimate "fix" in these cases. On the plus side, if the deadly opioid epidemic has brought us anything good, with about 150 people dying everyday, there are more donors these days than ever before - and many are healthy as they are young overdose victims who stop breathing, become brain dead, but are resuscitated and kept on a vent until they can become a donor. (as long as they don't have Hep C, etc.)

Hopefully if his heart is permanently damaged a donor can be found quickly.