A UCLA medical team became the first on the West Coast to implant a self-contained artificial heart in a human recipient. The 11-hour operation on Oct. 17 at the UCLA Medical Center was the fourth such successful procedure for the AbioCor Implantable Replacement Heart in the world.

"The operation went exceptionally well and the artificial heart is functioning beautifully," said Hillel Laks, chief of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the Heart and Lung Transplant Program, who, along with heart surgeon Daniel Marelli and cardiologist Jaime Moriguchi, performed the operation. The unidentified patient, a man in his 70s, was reported to be resting comfortably after surgery.

The two-pound AbioCor implantable heart replaces the ventricles of the human heart when it is removed.

Due to a "quiet period" policy required by Abiomed, the Massachusetts-based company that developed and manufactured the heart, additional information will not be available until a later date to be determined by the medical team.

The procedure creates hope for thousands, UCLA medical officials said.

"Heart disease is still the No. 1 killer of people, and certainly there has been a lot of attention focused on how to prevent heart disease and treat it," said Michael Karpf, director of the UCLA Medical Center. "But ultimately, when the heart fails, this is a mechanism to bridge people."

The titanium and plastic heart, dubbed AbioCor, replaces the ventricles of the human heart, circulating blood through the body. It weighs about two pounds and measures four inches in diameter, about the size of a diseased human heart. The motor is powered by an implanted battery that is recharged through the skin by an external battery pack carried by the patient. The pace of the pumping is altered to meet blood flow demands as the patient's level of exertion changes.

UCLA Medical Center was one of five national sites approved by the Food and Drug Administration in January to implant the mechanical heart in near-death heart failure patients who are ineligible for transplantation. The first two procedures were performed at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Ky., while the third implant took place at Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston.

Each year, there are about 2,400 heart donors available, with an estimated 50,000 people in need of a heart transplant.

"Most of these people cannot be helped with heart transplantation," Laks said in a recent interview. "And in an effort to find an alternative, the artificial heart was developed. But the previous trials were back in the '80s. This is the first more modern heart to be developed and go into clinical trials."

The obvious advantage of the artificial heart is that it can always be available "off the shelf," Laks said. Furthermore, there is no need to use the immunosuppressant drugs that help prevent the body from rejecting a human heart, he added. "You hope this could lessen the instance of side effects from the drugs that are used," Laks said. Those drugs can cause damage to the kidneys, for example.

On the other hand, Laks said, the artificial heart will require blood thinners to prevent clots from forming on the foreign surfaces of the pump. Other risks include potential problems with the heart's electrical motor wearing out, and the possibility of infection.

The medical center, which last year performed 102 heart transplants, has the largest heart-transplant program in the world. It currently has a waiting list of more than 140 patients.

"In the future, once it's been proven that the device is safe, it could be an option for people who prefer not to wait on the transplant list," Laks said.

For more information on the procedure, visit www.artificialheart.ucla.edu.