Heart surgeon brings new hope to state patients

Oklahomans with heart failure may soon have access to clinical trials for permanent heart pumps and other cutting-edge care.

Dr. James Long, who this month became head of the Oklahoma Advanced Heart Failure Program at Integris Baptist Medical Center, founded and directed the Utah Artificial Heart Program and was surgical director of the Utah Cardiac Transplant Program at LDS Hospital. Both are in Salt Lake City.

Long said he will expand the use of devices that haven't been used in Oklahoma, such as a palm-size rotary blood pump that is undergoing clinical trials and has been implanted in more than 250 people. Such devices are smaller, safer, quieter and last longer than their predecessors, Long said.

The number of people on heart transplant waiting lists far outstrips the number of donated organs. Although other areas of cardiovascular disease are showing improvement, Long said heart failure is worsening.

While in Utah, Long researched and implanted mechanical circulatory support systems — including artificial hearts and ventricular assist devices, which help hearts that are too weak to pump blood.

He predicted Baptist will be able to offer advanced heart failure care currently unavailable in the state.

"There's clearly an opportunity in terms of disease,” he said. "I think there's also an opportunity in terms of population and this whole field of heart failure and where this field is going.”

Long said Baptist has a great heritage to build on.

"We are very pleased to be able to join in that rich heritage and bring a new era of pioneering,” he said.

The field appears to be headed toward smaller, longer-term pumps. Currently, ventricular assist devices are intended as a stopgap while patients wait for a new heart.

"The field has moved more to ventricular assist devices than artificial hearts,” he said.

Long said he came to Oklahoma because of the state's high rate of cardiovascular disease and the opportunity to elevate heart failure care to an elite level. Hospitals such as Baptist can provide grassroots care, he said, in areas that need it — such as Oklahoma.

"My life has been built around pushing the envelope a bit,” he said.

Long, who also has a PhD in biochemistry, has treated about 40 Oklahomans since he arrived in Utah in 1989. He said they needed advanced-stage or permanent heart failure care that wasn't available in Oklahoma.

The world's attention turned to Salt Lake City in December 1982 when Dr. William DeVries implanted the first permanent artificial heart in Seattle dentist Barney Clark.

Long received his cardiac surgery training in Utah and worked in the lab on developing "next-generation” artificial organs. The promise of the technology stuck with him.

"What I learned in the research laboratory impacted substantially what I would do clinically for the next 15 years,” he said.

While in Utah, Long participated in a number of clinical trials of temporary and permanent devices.

"This has given us an understanding of where this field can go,” he said.

Dr. Nicolas Jabbour, a liver transplant surgeon and director of the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Institute, said the transplant program's success continues to build but stressed that it isn't just a transplant program.

"The infusion of Dr. Long's expertise in the heart failure field will be a giant step, enhancing our comprehensive programs,” he said.