DANVILLE, Pa. — It's called a Left Ventricular Assist Device or LVAD for short. To some, it may look like a random piece of medical equipment, but to Susanne Brown of Williamsport, it's what saved her life.
"Congestive heart failure is what I was going through, and I ended up in the Williamsport Hospital," Brown said.
Brown suffers from cardiomyopathy, a disease that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood and usually leads to heart failure. the Disease became so bad that she was told she would have to go into hospice.
"I didn't want to die. I think I kept saying that constantly. It got to the point that I really didn't know who I was," Brown said.
"She had about 60 pounds of fluid on her. She was hypotensive, ashen. She looked really bad; she was in low cardiac output, borderline shock, and end-stage heart failure," said Dr. Brendan Carry, medical director of the LVAD program at Geisinger Medical Center.
"(LVAD is) a mechanical device that we can use in patients who are otherwise not transplant candidates, and it basically acts as an assistance to the failing heart."
At one point, Brown was 215 pounds and couldn't even walk. Now she wears what she calls her new heart over her shoulder. She can walk and live her life again, thanks to this machine. It is battery operated, and the tube connects to the device in her heart.
"It sucks the blood out of the left ventricle, which is the main pump of the heart, and then it shunts the blood into the aorta and works basically as a bypass of the left ventricle," Dr. Carry explained.
"It's amazing, it's amazing," said Brown. "I'm still recovering. I can't do as much as I use to, like yard work and stuff like that, but I am getting stronger each and every day."
Dr. Carry says that anyone suffering from cardiomyopathy should ask their doctor about this device that could save their life.