Left Ventricular Assist Devices Play a Unique Role at NYUMC

A Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) is a mechanical device used to assist the heart’s pumping function in patients with end-stage heart failure. Often used as a bridge to transplantation, LVADs can also provide short-term support after heart surgery or long-term support as a permanent implant (known as destination therapy). LVADs have enabled patients to resume activities that they haven’t been able to do for years – allowing terminally ill, bed-ridden patients to get out of the hospital and go back to their lives.

After LVAD implantation, patients are likely to experience better blood flow to the kidneys, brain, liver, and other organs, and thus better organ function; improved strength and less fatigue; and the ability to breathe more easily. Unlike a total artificial heart, the LVAD allows a patient’s natural heart to remain in place, where it can help perform other critical functions. Patients implanted with the device do not need to take immunosuppressant drugs and may be able to reduce or eliminate any cardiac medications they have been taking.

NYU Medical Center is one of only a very few non-transplant centers in the country to offer this type of therapy. With a highly qualified, interdisciplinary team of clinicians from Cardiology, Cardiothoracic Surgery, and Critical Care, NYU Medical Center is able to consider LVAD implantation as destination therapy for patients in whom both medical therapy and heart pacemaker therapy have failed or for patients considered to be at high risk for surgery. The LVAD implantation services are led by Gregory Crooke, M.D., Ulrich P. Jorde, M.D., Greg Ribakove, M.D., and Timothy Vittorio, M.D.

For more information, please contact (212) 263-5979 or Audrey Kleet, LVAD Coordinator, (212) 263-2567.