World’s Smallest Heart Pump ‘A Game-changer’ in Keeping Failing Hearts Going Without Major Surgery

A heart pump no bigger than a fountain pen has just been approved by the FDA for use in children, having already saved adult lives in a revolutionary way.

Cardiologists don’t even need to open a chest cavity to install the Impella 5.5, the world’s smallest heart pump that can keep a heart going during critical moments of heart failure or cardiogenic shock.

21-year-old Katrina Penney was born with congenital heart defects, but the transplant she received also failed when she was 19. For 5 weeks, the Impella kept the failed heart pumping while a second heart transplant was secured.

“It does all the work for your heart,” Katrina Penney told CBS Philadelphia “It did save my life, 100%. I named my Impella ‘Ella.’”

“It’s very useful in the sense that actually it can be implantable without opening the chest,” Dr. Katsuhide Maeda with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where Penney was treated, told CBS. “We are so excited. This is a really like a, you know, game-changer.”

The pump component on the Impella only consists of the very tip of the device—making it the size of a fingertip, something Penney says makes her whole ordeal just seem unbelievable.

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