![At his home in Plymouth, Peter Quimby must waterproof the batteries and control unit that run his left ventricular assist device, LVAD while he showers. His heart is at 5% capacity and he is on a waiting list for a heart transplant. ] tsong-taataarii@startribune.com](https://arc.stimg.co/startribunemedia/TMC6P6DKMXXBRWS6ZORYI22ST4.jpg?&w=1080)
Scott Johnson stood before a room of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, looking pretty much like anyone else they would see come into their office. Of course, he's not. The small black bag he carried at his side powers the left ventricular assist device (LVAD) that helps pump blood through his body and keep him alive.
As more people are living longer with LVADs — originally developed to keep people alive only until a heart transplant — patients like the 42-year-old from Champlin are opting to stay closer to home for their more-routine medical care. The purpose of a first-ever LVAD Shared Care symposium at the University of Minnesota on Friday was to help allay some of the fear and intimidation that health workers and primary care physicians may have in treating patients whose fragile hearts are kept beating by this increasingly common technology.
"I like seeing my cardiologist at Mercy. I want to keep seeing him," said Johnson, who first discovered he'd had a heart attack at the Coon Rapids hospital before having his LVAD implanted at the University of Minnesota. He even volunteers at Mercy.
Left ventricular assist devices are implantable mechanical pumps that help pump blood from the lower left chamber of the heart into the aorta and then to the rest of the body. The device has a tube running from the left ventricle to the aorta and is part of the circulatory system. A power cable runs from the implanted pump to a control box that LVAD patients carry with them.
The first LVADs of 30 or 40 years ago would last only for days, said Dr. Peter Eckman, medical director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at the University of Minnesota and organizer of the symposium. The next generation of devices developed in the 1990s and early 2000s lasted for months. Technology has advanced to the point that patients now are living with LVADs for years. While the device still is meant primarily to serve as a bridge to transplant, Eckman said an increasing number of patients are simply living with an LVAD for longer periods. Some are not good candidates for transplant, either because of age or they smoke or other reasons.
For them, life with an LVAD is the new normal. And primary health care providers are seeing them in their practices every day. What Eckman wants people to know is this: They're not a crisis to be avoided. Many are living active, robust lives.
"We put these in to save people's lives. That's part of it," he said. "But we want people to have their lives back."
Peter Quimby, a Plymouth man living with an LVAD who the Star Tribune profiled in an article last fall, teaches a spinning class and participates in the Minneapolis Duathalon. Eckman knows of a former paratrooper who had a device implanted in his 80s and sped down a zip line in Costa Rica at 90. Another man, in his 70s, climbed Pikes Peak. Another plays hockey.
