Terumo Heart, Inc. Reaches Clinical Milestone as the 100th Patient Worldwide Receives the DuraHeart(TM) Left Ventricular Ass...( ANN ARBOR Mich. May 19 /- Terumo Hear...),Health

ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Terumo Heart Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Terumo Corporation, today announced reaching a critical milestone in the worldwide expansion of its DuraHeart(TM) Left-Ventricular Assist System (LVAS) as the 100th patient was treated by Latif Arusoglu, MD and Michiel Morshuis, MD, cardiothoracic surgeons at the Clinic for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart and Diabetes Center NRW, University Hospital of the Ruhr-University of Bochum in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090519/DE18718 )

During the weeks leading up to this major milestone, heart failure centers in Europe and the U.S. were kept up to date in the progress toward treating the one hundredth patient. In a fitting example of the successful ongoing global expansion of the DuraHeart LVAS program, the distinction for the 100th implant came in rapid succession as three centers across two continents performed implants. In less than 20 hours, Yoshifumi Naka, MD, PhD, director of cardiac transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and associate professor of surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, treated the 99th patient; Drs. Arusoglu and Morshuis treated the 100th patient; and David A. Dean, MD, Head, Section of Thoracic and Cardiac Transplantation, Gerald McGinnis Cardiovascular Institute, Allegheny General Hospital, treated the 101st patient.

"Our institution has implanted more of these devices than any other institution worldwide so we were very happy to be the site for the 100th patient implant," said Professor Jan Gummert, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon and Director of the Clinic for Thoracic and Cardiova
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