A Fully Magnetically Levitated Left Ventricular Assist Device — Final Report

By Mandeep R. Mehra, N. Uriel, Y. Naka, J. Cleveland, M. Yuzefpolskaya, C. Salerno, M. Walsh, C. Milano, C. Patel, S. Hutchins and 30 more. New England Journal of Medicine, 2019

982 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background In two interim analyses of this trial, patients with advanced heart failure who were treated with a fully magnetically levitated centrifugal‐flow left ventricular assist device were less likely to have pump thrombosis or nondisabling stroke than were patients treated with a mechanical‐bearing axial‐flow left ventricular assist device. Methods We randomly assigned patients with advanced heart failure to receive either the centrifugal‐flow pump or the axial‐flow pump irrespective of the intended goal of use (bridge to transplantation or destination therapy). The composite primary end point was survival at 2 years free of disabling stroke or reoperation to replace or remove a malfunctioning device. The principal secondary end point was pump replacement at 2 years. Results This final analysis included 1028 enrolled patients: 516 in the centrifugal‐flow pump group and 512 in the axial‐flow pump group. In the analysis of the primary end point, 397 patients (76.9%) in the centrifugal‐flow pump group, as compared with 332 (64.8%) in the axial‐flow pump group, remained alive and free of disabling stroke or reoperation to replace or remove a malfunctioning device at 2 years (relative risk, 0.84; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.78 to 0.91; P<0.001 for superiority). Pump replacement was less common in the centrifugal‐flow pump group than in the axial‐flow pump group (12 patients [2.3%] vs. 57 patients [11.3%]; relative risk, 0.21; 95% CI, 0.11 to 0.38; P<0.001). The numbers of events per patient‐year for stroke of any severity, major bleeding, and gastrointestinal hemorrhage were lower in the centrifugal‐flow pump group than in the axial‐flow pump group. Conclusions Among patients with advanced heart failure, a fully magnetically levitated centrifugal‐flow left ventricular assist device was associated with less frequent need for pump replacement than an axial‐flow device and was superior with respect to survival free of disabling stroke or reoperation to replace or remove a malfunctioning device. (Funded by Abbott; MOMENTUM 3 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02224755.)

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Surgery

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b4ebbceac3bf26a5901250f502aafa9facb84dd