The French company "Carmat" announced on Monday that it has sold its artificial heart, fully manufactured under the commercial name "Eson," for the first time. This heart has been used in a patient in Naples, Italy, in preparation for a transplant, marking the company's first sale since its establishment in 2008. The company confirmed in a statement that the procedure "was performed by a team led by Dr. Ciro Maiello, a heart surgeon at the Naples hospital center, one of the centers with the most experience in artificial hearts in Italy."
In December 2020, "Carmat" received the green light to market its artificial heart in Europe, paving the way for heart transplantation, thanks to positive results from a study that began in 2016 and is still ongoing. "Carmat" pointed out that this procedure "represents the first sale" since its creation in 2008 and constitutes "a significant step that opens a new chapter for societal development."
Just a few days earlier, on July 15, the French medical technology company announced that it had successfully implanted a fully artificial heart for the first time in the United States as part of a clinical study conducted at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Ten patients will be selected for the procedure as part of this trial, according to a study protocol approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Currently, three U.S. centers are in charge of selecting the patients.
