Azad Ibrahim Najar is a Kurdish doctor from Iraqi Kurdistan, born in Baghdad in 1968. A senior consultant in urology, researcher and inventor of several medical technologies and mechanical organs. After receiving his medical degree from Mosul University in 1992, he worked as a medical doctor for two years before moving to Sweden in 1995. He holds 35 worldwide patents and is the inventor of the world’s first artificial heart with two atria and two ventricles.
We had the pleasure of conducting an interview with him:
Medspire: What is the invention that you’re currently working on?
Dr. Azad: The invention that I work on nowadays is a pulsating total artificial heart that mimics the human heart in construction and function. The artificial heart will completely replace the diseased heart in patients with advanced heart failure who usually die within one year.
Medspire: Why did you develop an artificial heart?
Dr. Azad: For many reasons, One is that I am a very technical and innovative person. Another reason is that I had a relative with a congenital heart disease whom I witnessed his suffering and frequent hospital admissions due to his heart condition. Also, when I was in Baghdad, I worked at a heart center and I saw the same misery with the patients there, and many of them died because there was no treatment for their heart conditions.
Medspire: How did you start, and who helped you?
Dr. Azad: I got the idea to develop an artificial heart pump around 1999. It was essential to study the human heart carefully. I have therefore spent the first 3-4 years studying our natural heart in detail. I applied for my first patent in 2001. Many heart experts encouraged me, while some said that I have a hard job ahead of me and it is not an easy goal to pursue. But I decided to continue when I had a feeling that I would succeed in the project. Two of my brothers also provided assistance at the beginning, and then competent people joined the project. Currently, we are a team of approximately 37 individuals, each contributing their expertise from various specialties and skills.
Medspire: What makes your artificial heart stand out from the other available total artificial hearts?
Dr. Azad: The other three pulsating total artificial hearts consist of two ventricles without atria. In comparison, our pulsating total artificial heart consists of two ventricles and two atria just like the natural human heart. It has four valves that work in a similar way to the valves in the human heart. The valves that lie between the atria and ventricles move back and forth to create the pump mechanism in our total artificial heart in the same way that our natural heart pumps blood, according to Prof. Stig Lundbäck’s research on so-called AV-plane movement. It also has an automatic regulation that means that the artificial heart pumps the amount of blood that the body needs depending on the body’s activity. Additionally, it has a long battery life of 12 hours with several other good features.
Medspire: What are the benefits of a four-chamber heart?
Dr. Azad: We imitate the natural heart’s construction when we construct our total artificial heart to have two atria and two ventricles. Thus, our artificial heart consists of two main pumps as the natural heart, one on the right side connected to the pulmonary circulation and one on the left side connected to the body’s systemic circulation. Each pump consists of an atrium and a ventricle, and in between, there is a valve equivalent to the Tricuspid valve on the right side and the Mitral valve on the left side. The benefits to imitating natural heart construction are many.
Having atria in the construction helps us mount and have access to pressure sensors that sense the amount of blood flowing back to the atria. Therefore, we can automatically regulate the amount of blood pumped from the artificial heart. The mechanism is the the same way a natural heart works, as these “baroreceptors” regulate the amount of blood pumped out from our natural heart. Another advantage is that we can separately regulate the amount of blood pumped from each pump in our artificial heart independently of the other pump. In this way, we can push a different amount of blood from the right and the left pump in our artificial heart. Pumping varying amounts of blood from both pumps helps us regulate the right-left imbalance in our circulatory system, caused by the bronchial circulation to the lungs. It is essential to control the right-left imbalance in a good way. Otherwise, complications arise, such as pulmonary oedema, which means an increased amount of water in our lungs which can cause less oxygen supply and difficult breathing. Lastly, having two separate pumps helps us implant our artificial heart in humans more easily, even in people with a smaller chest size when we can place the different pumps in the chest where space is available.
Medspire: Did you perform any actual tests? What were the results?
Dr. Azad: We have tested the artificial heart in different animal species such as pigs, calves and sheep. We have performed acute animal operations so far, which means that the artificial heart should not remain in the animal’s body for more than 24 hours. Until now, we have performed 35 successful acute animal tests. We are on the brink of conducting chronic animal tests, where the artificial heart pump can remain in the animal’s body for over 24 hours, extending up to several weeks.
Editor’s Note: The interview with Dr. Azad Najjar presented in this article offers a glimpse into his groundbreaking work and visionary pursuits as of the year 2021. Since the time of the interview, significant advancements and developments may have occurred in the field of medical technology and artificial heart research. As with any innovative journey, the landscape can evolve rapidly, and we encourage readers to explore recent updates to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of Dr. Najjar’s work and its impact on medical science.
