Word: atria
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...this regard it was instructive to compare the newspaper diagrams of Clark's new heart with Brooks' operation. The pump looked moderately interesting, as did the hookup of the prosthesis to the atria, but the picture held none of the force of the scene in the Texas prison. One sketch showed clearly, in cartoon style, where Brooks' girlfriend was standing, the position of the chaplains, the precise spot where the catheters entered the arms. Of course, the dramatic content of the events was in inverse proportion to the excitement of the settings. In Clark's case...
Then DeVries removed the two pumping chambers (or ventricles) of Clark's heart, leaving the two atria, which function as storage chambers for blood. In all, about two-thirds of the heart were cut away. The cavity in the chest of the 6-ft. 2-in. Clark could easily accommodate the Jarvik-7. "There's room enough for two!" said DeVries with delight. The prosthesis is slightly larger than an average heart and too large, in fact, for most women...
Next came trouble. Before the artificial heart could be put in place, Dacron connectors had to be sewn onto the ends of the two atria, the aorta and the pulmonary artery. The heart snaps into these grooved, circular connectors in a manner that DeVries says is "like closing Tupperware." However, when he attempted to install the connectors, he found that the tissue around Clark's heart "would tear like tissue paper." Slowly, gingerly, DeVries managed to attach the four cuffs and finally to snap in the Jarvik-7. The device was primed with blood, but DeVries was dissatisfied with...
...Utah heart, dubbed the Jarvik 7 for its designer, Robert Jarvik, is made of plastic and aluminum and powered by electricity. The implant operation will be performed by Utah Surgeon William DeVries. He will cut away the heart's lower chambers (the ventricles), leaving the upper ones (the atria) intact. Then he will sew Dacron fittings to the aorta, pulmonary artery and atria. The artificial heart, actually two ventricles, is then snapped into place "like Tupperware," says DeVries. A plastic tube leads from each ventricle through openings made in the patient's abdomen to a breadbox-size console...
Teeny-Hookers. The idea of white slavery sounds as remote as the atria of ancient Rome or the tents of Saladin, but it is an appalling fact of life in today's East Village. Once a colorful and relatively innocuous capital of the young American counterculture, the East Village has declined precipitately in recent years. The flower people of the late 1960s, mostly middle-class kids trying to create a gaudy secular religion, have given way to a desperate culture of emotionally troubled rejects, largely from working-class and even ghetto families. Amphetamines, heroin and old-fashioned alcohol have...