HeartMate 3 Heart Pump is now FDA approved for advanced heart failure patients not eligible for a heart transplant. Abbott

Abbott announced that the HeartMate 3 Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) has received FDA approval as a destination therapy for people living with advanced heart failure. With the approval, physicians can now offer the HeartMate 3 system to patients not eligible for a transplant who will live with their device for the rest of their lives.

More than 5.7 million Americans suffer from heart failure, and there are approximately 915,000 new patients diagnosed with the disease annually. For advanced heart failure patients who can no longer rely on earlier stage treatment options, LVAD's take the workload off a weakened heart by pumping blood through the body�providing crucial, life-saving support for patients awaiting a heart transplant or for those not able to receive one.

"Approximately a quarter of a million people are living with advanced heart failure, and many of these people will need a heart transplant; however, only a few thousand will receive a new heart," said Nir Uriel , M.D., director of Heart Failure, Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support at the University of Chicago Medicine . "The destination therapy approval for Abbott's HeartMate 3 device now gives these patients new hope that they can receive a heart pump clinically proven to mitigate challenges we've historically confronted with this therapy�stroke and blood clotting� while also offering survival rates on par with transplant".

In developing the HeartMate 3 system, Abbott set a new standard in LVAD therapy, reducing the system's size while reimagining how blood passes through a heart pump. The HeartMate 3 pump utilizes technology known as Full MagLev (fully magnetically-levitated) Flow, which reduces trauma to the blood passing through the pump while improving flow.

See- "wo-Year Outcomes with a Magnetically Levitated Cardiac Pump in Heart Failure"- Mandeep R. Mehra, M.D., Daniel J. Goldstein, M.D., Nir Uriel, M.D., et al., for the MOMENTUM 3 Investigators-April 12, 2018 N Engl J Med 2018; 378:1386-1395 . DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1800866.