Skeletal muscle ventricles: A potential treatment for heart failure

Heart failure continues to cause major morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide. As operative techniques and immunosuppression have improved over the last several decades, orthotopic cardiac transplantation has become the preferred alternative for treatment of end-stage heart failure. However, a lack of an adequate supply of donors, the problems of chronic rejection, as well as continued high costs have kept the application of this procedure limited. This has fostered the development of several artificial devices, many of which are currently undergoing clinical trials. Rather than using an artificial mechanical device, our laboratory has developed and studied pumping chambers constructed from latissimus dorsi muscle which we term skeletal muscle ventricles or SMVs. This report will focus on two effective applications of SMVs- the diastolic aortic counterpulsator model and the left ventricular apex-to-aorta model.