< More articles

Share

Tucson Company Saves Lives, Provides Artificial Hearts for Patients Awaiting Transplants

September 14, 2018

Syncardia Systems, LLC., a Picard Medical Company

“We’re continually trying to make the artificial heart experience better,” SynCardia CEO, Michael Garippa, told Chamber Business News.

“We’re continually trying to make the artificial heart experience better,” SynCardia CEO, Michael Garippa, told Chamber Business News.

PHOENIX, Arizona — Sep. 14, 2018 — Today, heart transplantation is widely recognized as the most effective treatment for advanced and end-stage heart failure patients. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t enough donor hearts to go around.

Emily Richardson from Chamber Business News interviewed SynCardia CEO, Michael Garippa, about the company’s lifesaving solution to this long-standing problem: the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH).

“We’re continually trying to make the artificial heart experience better,” Garippa explains. “The big innovations are in the power packs. It was originally 400-pounds, and you stayed in the hospital. Then it was 40-pounds, and you stayed in the hospital. Now, there’s a 13-pound unit, called the Freedom Driver, that you can go home with… It works with plug-in power or batteries that let people be untethered, but sooner or later the batteries have to be recharged or the unit gets plugged into the wall.”

Read the full article on Chamber Business News.

About SynCardia Systems, LLC

Headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., SynCardia manufactures the world’s only commercially approved total artificial heart. In clinical use for more than 35 years and with more than 1,800 implants, the SynCardia temporary Total Artificial Heart (TAH) is the most widely used and extensively studied TAH in the world.

By partnering with, training and supporting healthcare teams at more than 140 transplant hospitals and heart failure programs in more than 20 countries, SynCardia helps create better outcomes for critically ill adults and adolescents whose best chance at survival is total heart replacement. When a donor heart isn’t an available option, SynCardia provides a new heart without the wait for patients with end-stage heart failure affecting both sides of the heart (biventricular failure).