Sorry for the lack of response. It's been busy since we got the news Friday afternoon.
It's LVAD they are wanting to install. There's a few post above that describe what the purpose is for.
I keep hearing the term "destination therapy". Not a fan of the term; instead of trying to beat around the bush so to speak... they should come out and say it, it's to prolong your life.
Because of my father-in-laws age, we just found out that he's not a candidate for a heart transplant with the criteria in our area.
There is an option at Duke and they supposedly put people on the list at his age for a heart donor.
They are looking at that option but the two big options are;
Get this procedure done and hope that it last for a long while (there's no replacing the device; it's either get a transplant or live with the device for as long as you can)
or
Just enjoy the time you have left on this earth and experiment with some medicines.
I have a friend on one. It’s keeping him alive. Initially, it was a bridge to a heart transplant. But his kidneys have deteriorated to the point that a transplant is no longer possible. He’ll be on the pump the rest of his life. He has a lot of complications and is in and out of MUSC continually.
He's already having kidney problems because of lack of flow.
What complications did he experience? My guess is that with the heart now performing artificially; the rest of the system starts shutting down/stop performing