acquisition, displays/exhibits, material studies, recent biomed
An evocative biomedical object: the HeartMate mechanical heart
This HeartMate XVE, a first-generaltion implantable LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device), was developed in the 1980s and cleared for use in the US and Europe in the mid-1990s. In Denmark, this so-called “mechanical heart” was first used at the Heart Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen in 1998.
In 2006, Rigshospitalet shifted to the much smaller HeartMate 2, and by that time a total of 28 patients with severely impaired heart function had been equipped with a HeatMate in order to bridge the gap between the failure of their own heart and a cardiac transplant.
The HeartMate, which is basically a titanium electromechanical pump weighing around 1.6 kilos, is implanted into the abdomen of the patient. The two upper hoses are attached to the left ventricle and aorta, and the lower tube passes through the skin, allowing the pump to draw in air and to be attached to a control unit, two portable rechargeable batteries, and a monitor for inspection in hospital.
Patients have been known to be supported by the HeartMate for more than two years, and they generally experience a radical improvement in their well-being after the implantation. Some, especially younger, patients are reported to prefer a LVAD to a heart transplantation.
What is striking about the HeartMate, however, is the size, weight, and crudity of the apparatus. It simply looks like a piece of plumbing. The physical appearance obviously collides with the delicate and vital functions it performs, and certainly with the cultural image of the body part that it assists. Perhaps objects like this can work in a museum setting to exemplify the potential clash between ideas about the body and its parts shared by the public, and a more technical approach adopted by medical doctors?
Certainly, the sturdy metal casing of the HeartMate does not seem capable of incorporating the idea of the heart as the most precious part of the human body. And perhaps for that very reason (i.e. the tension between the idea of the heart and the physical appearance of the mechanical heart) this is an object that provokes instant reactions in those who engage with it. In that way, it is an amazing museum object.
14 Mar 2008 Søren
Oh, excellent acquisition. The Smithsonian tends to get more hi-tech gee-whiz donations than the NMHM so we don’t have any of these artificial heart-type things yet. We do have an excellent collection of artificial heart valves though.
I agree, Mike, it’s a great artefact. That was my reaction too, and so thinks everyone here—for example, Bente immediately made it picture of the month (’Månedens billede’) on our website. This appreciation of the HeartMate raises a more general curatorial question: What is it actually that makes an acquired artefact an excellent/great/good etc. one ? What qualities must it have? In other words, if acquisitions really are the life-blood of and nourishment for museums, I think we need to analyse what constitutes high-calory stuff. Is it in the eyes of the beholder only, or are there ‘universal criteria’? The question is related to similar questions about what constitutes a good theory, a valid fact, a great piece of art, etc. so it’s not an easy one. But I think it’s central to our business.
My guess is that it’s partly an appreciation of a new technology, partly a question of rarity and partly an awareness of transience (ie devices like this will probably be extensively modified soon in Museum time). And then there’s the Gee-Whiz factor for us older people. A pump! That works as a heart and you can move around! Gee-Whiz!
That’s interesting! The reasons it gets a high score on my ‘good artefacts’ scale are:
1) first, the tangible presence effect: it feels HEAVY when you hold it! Imagine having that heavy beast in my abdomen! Will it also feel heavy after implantation?
2) second, it stimulates my bionic fantasy. The spare part utopia (or dystopia if you want). (See Project Bionics)
3) third, it makes me oscillate between wonder and disappointment. On the one hand it’s a technical feat. On the other hand (and paradoxically) I’m disappointed: it looks just like a pump – an ordinary pump. Could be a spare part in a car or something in a cow-stable. Modern medicine is supposed to be so high-tech, and the immediate impression is old-style pump!
4) fourth, this gadget epitomizes the absurd inequalities of the contemporary global health care sector. If I remember rightly, they only produced some 4000 copies of HeartMate. and each of them cost over 100.000 USD. Okay. it’s not the price of a Lexus, but much more than you would expect from a medical gadget. It’s 100.000 times more than the little bag with salts that keeps diarrhea victims from dying in Bangladesh. It’s obscene to imagine that one HeartMate benefactor is worth a hundredthousand lives in some parts of the world.
Thanks for all this, Mike and Thomas.
I think you both point to very interesting features of the mechanical heart as a museum object. Thomas definitely draws out potent interpretational points about the object, and I think you are quite right in also stressing the sensual aspects of engaging with it. But I find it difficult to work out how to transform your criteria into operational guidelines for future acquisition activities. There, I think Mike is probably more useful in stating more general characteristics of evocative objects.
I think the HeartMate draws a lot of its attraction from its curious nature. Even if it is not unique or even very rare, it conflicts with our common views of our bodies and of the nature of recent biomedicine in ways that are characteristic of curiosities or anecdotes. It just doesn’t fit into our normal patterns of thought. Such objects will be good museum objects until their curiosity disappears in time, but precisely because they contradict patterns, I think it is difficult to pin down their attractiveness in great detail.
Ahh… curators and acquisition envy.
The LVAD is so evidently ‘unheartlike’ that it encourages the kinds of responses that Thomas describes. But the point about its mechanical heft is intriguing: yes, it does look bulky and clumsy (and feels that way too), but what are we comparing it with? A healthy, living human heart is a wonderfully compact and elegant organ, but diseased hearts – distended, enlarged, clogged – are different, and of course it is these that the LVAD assists. For a contrast, what about this, a true ‘bionic’ heart. Unlike the LVAD, this was designed to actually take the place of the heart. It is smaller and lighter and has a wonderful organic quality to it – more ‘heartlike’, you could say. But then this only succeeded in keeping a patient alive for hours, whereas the LVAD works for much longer.
‘Acquisition envy’—that’s a nifty concept :-)
And apparently not much used in museum circles either (if we can trust Google).
The Akutsu III makes my heart green with envy…