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SALT LAKE CITY — For a time, Brent Haupt's cardiomyopathy robbed him of the heart he was born with, but it never deprived him of his sense of humor.
While Haupt spent much of 2015 cooped up at Intermountain Medical Center with an entirely artificial heart, he kept a statue of the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz in his hospital room as a reminder of his end goal.
"I was just a man in search of a heart," Haupt says wryly.
In October 2015, after six months of waiting, an organ donor's heart became available for transplant, and Haupt's search came to an end. After a week of getting used to his real, live human heart, Haupt was able to leave the hospital. Three days after that — perhaps sooner than his doctors would have liked — he was back at work.
"When I think back at the army of people in this hospital, in this building, that made this all possible, it’s humbling," Haupt said Tuesday, briefly overcome with emotion while sitting next to his surgeon, Dr. Bruce Reid. "I’m very grateful for that."
Haupt returned to Intermountain Medical Center Tuesday to share his story of recovery in advance of a 25-year anniversary celebration this weekend honoring the founding of the Intermountain Artificial Heart Program.
On Saturday, patients and their families who have benefitted from partial or complete artificial heart replacements at Intermountain will reunite with their doctors and other caregivers to commemorate the far-reaching effects of the technology. More than 300 people are expected to attend the celebration, held once every five years.
Reid, a cardiothoracic surgeon and the mechanical circulatory support medical director of the Intermountain Medical Center Artificial Heart Program, said the gratitude for the program's history is a two-way street between doctors and patients.
"We learn something from every one of our patients. Every patient, we gain a little more experience, a little more expertise," Reid said. "Thank you for helping us to be better."
According to Intermountain spokesman Jess Gomez, the hospital system is one of only a handful in the country capable of implanting total hearts, which "replace the native heart entirely rather than just assist it."
Since 1993, Intermountain doctors have implemented 605 total devices, with 232 of them designed as a holdover until a heart transplant becomes available. Other devices Intermountain uses are designed to assist a patient for the rest of their life.
"The problem with heart transplants is there just aren't enough donors," which is why it's critical to have another way to replace or otherwise sustain a person's failing heart, Reid said.
Gomez explained in a release that Intermountain was the largest participant in a significant study into a therapy that uses a tool called a left ventricular assist device to help patients who were "fatally ill but ineligible for a transplant." Intermountain was also an early user of the most compact left ventricular assist device that is currently available, he said.
More than 40 medical providers are now part of the Artificial Heart Program at Intermountain.
"It's been an incredible evolution of both technology and how we select and manage patients. … Between the machines and the people, it's pretty incredible," said Dr. Brad Rasmusson, the Thoracic Intensive Care Unit medical director for the program.