Carmat's artificial heart looks to cows for efficacy

Carmat is blazing a trail toward a functional artificial heart, and the company's so-far success comes thanks to bovine tissue used to get around the clotting problems that plagued synthetic devices past. As The New York Times reports, Carmat's device has been cleared for human trials in Europe and elsewhere, and researchers say the use of cow tissue could help the device succeed where others have proven ineffective. Bovine tissue isn't new in the medical device world, as many replacement aortic valves incorporate it, but Carmat is the first to put it to use in an artificial heart. More