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DeVries had waited nearly two years for a second opportunity to implant the artificial heart. The long delay tried his patience. "It was very frustrating to me to have patients who might die while I have that thing sitting on the shelf," the surgeon told a reporter last January. Because of the medical problems that Barney Clark had experienced, both the FDA and the University of Utah hospital where the first implant surgery was performed wanted to reconsider any further use of the device. DeVries pressed both hospital and agency for permission to use the heart in a somewhat healthier patient than Clark, who had suffered from both lung and heart disease. It was not until June of this year that the FDA finally consented, allowing a total of six implants on healthier patients. Meanwhile, the University of Utah had authorized only one operation, a decision that infuriated DeVries and was partly responsible for his decision to move on to Louisville.
The forthright and unconventional DeVries had spent virtually his entire career at the University of Utah. Born in Brooklyn, the son of a doctor and a nurse, he had moved to Ogden, Utah, as an infant after his father's death in World War II. DeVries attended medical school at the state university and became interested in the artificial heart after accidentally wandering into a lecture by Dr. Willem Kolff, the Dutch-born doctor who founded Utah's artificial-organ program. After the lecture, DeVries asked Kolff for a job. "What's your name?" the distinguished doctor asked him. "When I told him," DeVries recalls, "he said, 'That's a good Dutch name. You're hired.' " The surgeon's move from a university hospital to the profit-making institution in Louisville was criticized by his peers. It also forced him to uproot his brood of seven children and leave behind his beloved Rocky Mountain ski slopes. Nonetheless, DeVries expresses no regrets about coming to Humana: "I have been able to set up this project exactly the way I wanted to, and what's more important, I have been able to select the patient without consideration of whether he can pay his bill," said DeVries last week.
Indeed, for Schroeder, a man of modest means, cost has not been an issue. Humana paid for the $15,500 Jarvik-7 heart and its drive system. They also provided free rooms at the hospital for the entire Schroeder family. Should Schroeder become well enough to leave the hospital, Humana plans to give him use of a specially designed house, with a built-in air system for his heart. Throughout, Humana has spared no expense and taken no risks. Because security had been a problem during the Clark case—two artificial hearts were stolen from DeVries' office—the hospital has posted four uniformed guards on Schroeder's floor, one directly outside his room. Concerned about the strain of the patient's long hospitalization and the intense media coverage, Humana is providing his family with instruction in "stress management."