Expert Available to Comment on Heart Device Approval

On Monday, April 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the HeartMate II device, a heart-assisting technology that can help heart failure patients remain alive until they can receive a heart transplant.

In the wake of this approval, the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center’s Francis Pagani, M.D., Ph.D., is available to speak about this device, other heart-assisting devices now in use or in clinical trials, and related issues. 

Dr. Pagani co-led the clinical trial of HeartMate II that led to the FDA approval; the results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August 2007. For more on those results, visit http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/heartmate2.htm .

Dr. Pagani leads a team at the U-M Center for Circulatory Support that recently became only the third center in the country to be certified by the Joint Commission for ventricular assist devices, the umbrella term for technologies that help a weakened heart pump blood to the body.

Source: University of Michigan Health System

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