London: Selwa Hussain carries a 6-kilogram rucksack on her back all the time – it contains her heart. Selwa, from the UK, underwent a life-saving operation in 2017 after which she has been carrying her artificial heart in the backpack.
The backpack contains batteries, an electric motor and a pump that pushes air through tubes to power plastic chambers in her chest which pushes blood around her body.
Selwa is the first UK woman who was discharged from the hospital with a total artificial heart.
Her unusual story began in June 2017 when she felt terribly breathless. She somehow managed to drive to her family doctor in Clayhall, Essex. She was referred to her local hospital where doctors told her that she was suffering from severe heart failure.
She was rushed to Harefield Hospital four days later as the medics struggled to save her life. She was too ill to have a support pump help her failing heart and too ill for a heart transplant surgery.
That’s when her husband Al agreed that Selwa be given an artificial heart.
Surgeons removed her diseased natural heart and replaced it with an artificial implant and a specialist unit on her back.
She carries a second unit on standby in another backpack, just in case the first one fails.
Her husband or another carer must always be with her and if there’s an emergency, they have only 90 seconds to connect her to the backup machine.
The artificial heart drives blood around her body at 138 beats per minute in a rhythm that causes her chest to vibrate. The motor in her backpack constantly pumps and produces a whirring noise.
The two large plastic tubes connected to the backpack enter her body through her stomach and travel up to her chest. They then fill two balloons inside her chest cavity with air, which work like the chambers of a real heart to push blood around her body.
