August 26

The pump is powered by a battery pack

England have

A man has been given the world's first battery-operated heart in a pioneering operation in Britain.

The patient, an unnamed 62-year-old from the south of England, is now in a stable condition at the world-famous Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire.

He had only months to live when doctors offered him the chance of being a guinea-pig for the newtitaniumand plastic device, manufactured in America.

Known as the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) it is not a replacement for the human heart.

It is essentially an electrical pump which does most of the work of the pumping chamber of the heart, the leftventricle.

During the four-hour operation the LVAD was placed in the wall of the man's abdomen and connected to his heart.

The pump is powered by a battery pack which the patient will wear on his belt.

The operation was performed by an 11-man team led by top heart surgeons Sir Terence English and John Wallwork.

Sir Terence carried out Britain's first successful heart transplant on entertainer Keith Castle in 1979.

The pioneering procedure could provide a vital alternative to heart transplants.

The LVAD, which costs ?0,000, has been used successfully in more than 200 patients to keep them alive until a donated heart became available.

However, a trial being carried out a Papworth will allow surgeons to see whether the device has a role in the long-term therapy of patients with cardiac failure.

Patients being considered suitable to take part in the trial are being randomly allocated to two groups.

One will have the device implanted and the remaining control group will continue with their usual drug treatment.   

Mr and Mrs Finkbine arrive in London en route to Phoenix, Arizona

Sherri Finkbine, from Phoenix in Arizona, was denied an abortion in her home-state following intense negative publicity surrounding her case.

The 30-year-old mother decided to terminate her fifth pregnancy after discovering thattranquilizersshe had taken in the first few weeks of her pregnancy contained the drug Thalidomide.

In recent months there has been increasing evidence suggesting Thalidomide causes severe foetal deformities including missing limbs, deafness and blindness.

Mrs Finkbine, host of children's television programme "Romper Room", told her story to the local newspaper, believing it would alert other mothers in the same situation to the dangers of the drug.

But she became the focus of an intense anti-abortion campaign and worldwide public condemnation.

The negative publicity led her local hospital in Phoenix to withdraw a tentative offer of a legal abortion for fear they may be held criminally liable - the current law in Arizona states that abortion can only be carried out to save the mother's life.

Mrs Finkbine and her husband, Robert, a school teacher, took the case to the Arizona State Supreme Court but were unsuccessful.

Despite vilification from anti-abortionists across the United States and the world she flew to Sweden where the operation was carried out.

After the operation it was confirmed that the foetus had no legs and only one arm. 

titanium: a light strong gray lustrous corrosion-resistant metallic element（鈦）

ventricle: a chamber of the heart that receives blood from an atrium and pumps it to the arteries（心室）

tranquilizer:a drug used to reduce stress or tension without reducing mental clarity（鎮(zhèn)定劑）