[49para]

"Patients will wear a 4-kg external controller pack that contains two rechargeable batteries (providing about 5 hours of operation each), although they can also plug in directly to a power outlet."

This seems like a potential issue.

[foxyv]

Usually these artificial hearts are to keep a person alive long enough for a donor to become available. Not a problem if they have to lug a battery around for a few months since it's not permanent.

[49para]

Seems like a lot of trauma to have multiple open heart surgeries.

Seems like something like a portable ECMO (not sure if that exists) would be less invasive

(ECMO is for oxigination which probably would be overkill in this situation)

[rscho]

No, ECMO is a big machine. And is extremely invasive.

[cududa]

People on HN love to nitpick massive new inventions that will surely improve over time.

If my options are death or a battery pack, I think I’d go with the battery pack

[ars]

> This seems like a potential issue.

How so? That's light enough even a kid could wear it as a backpack.

[49para]

Have you met anyone that just had open heart surgery ? They are not at their peak physically for sure.

[ars]

That's a good point, but I would assume they would be bed-bound at that point, and as they got better they would be able to carry this around.

The article talks about designing the machine to handle running, so I think it's intended for people to wear it for life and be generally healthy.