CHICAGO – The headline to this story almost reads like a typo–but it’s true. Leroy Hanes was able to leave Chicago’s Advocate Christ Medical Center Thursday without his own heart.
Thanks to ‘the world’s only totally artificial heart,’ Hanes can keep living his life while he awaits a donor heart, according to a WMAQ-TV report. The station’s Nesita Kwan reports Hanes suffered heart failure when he arrived to the medical center and his best chance for survival was a heart transplant.
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Thanks to doctors, he doesn’t have to wait for the donor heart in the hospital – he’s free to go home because his artificial heart is portable. The machine fits in a pseudo-backpack, which Hanes wore when he exited the hospital Thursaday.
Kwan reports Hanes said he wants to get back to gardening when he returns.
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