Dick Cheney buys time with a LVAD
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, aged 69, has been provided due to his heart problems with a left ventricular assist device (LVAD), a battery-operated pump that is implanted by surgery to help the heart do its job.
Cheney had the procedure done at nova Fairfax Heart and Vascular Institute from Falls Church and said that he took the decision of having the surgery when it became clear to him that his heart problems could not be kept under control with medication any more. The disease of which the former Vice President suffers from is called congestive heart failure and about 5 million Americans share the same diagnosis with him: the heart weakens in time, mainly because of heart attacks, and cannot pump enough blood. Besides the left ventricular assist device, another solution is heart transplant, but a matching heart donor is quite hard to find, and some of them are too weak to undergo surgical procedures.
Anyways, people who have LVADS are considered for a heart transplant, and this device buys them time and helps damaged muscle to function. The most common type of LVAD has a tube that pulls blood out of the left ventricle and pumps it into the aorta. It is a small device that allows people to walk around with it like a back pack, and the only thing that is out of the body is the battery that needs changing once in a while.
