Savannah Teen Heads Home Without A Heart, Powered By Twin Pumps

Nineteen-year-old Andrew Miles is back in his Savannah home, doing homework and hanging out with friends while relying on something most people never think about: a mechanical total artificial heart. After a rare operation that replaced his failing ventricles with implanted pumps, he now lives tethered to external power lines and battery packs. Doctors say that gear is what lets him get on with daily life while he waits for a donor heart. Family and hospital accounts say Miles is one of only a very small number of Americans ever discharged home on this kind of support.

Emory team used a Double VAD to replace both ventricles

The operation that keeps Miles alive was anything but routine. Dr. Mani Daneshmand and the Emory Heart & Vascular team carried out a nonstandard procedure that uses two left ventricular assist devices to provide full circulatory support. According to Emory News, Daneshmand, who developed the approach while at Duke Medical Center, built what he calls a Double VAD to take over both sides of Miles’s heart because he was highly sensitized to antibodies and both ventricles had failed. Emory describes the move as a last-resort effort to stabilize him and bridge him to a future transplant.

How the HeartMate 6 configuration works

The surgical setup, sometimes nicknamed the HeartMate 6, links two HeartMate 3 pumps so they can push blood to the lungs and out to the rest of the body, as reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The paper notes that the team removes part of the ventricle before placing the pumps, a step surgeons say lowers the risk of blood stagnation and clotting compared with leaving both ventricles intact. “I’m just blessed to be here,” Miles told the outlet, which reports that his long-term goal is to receive a transplant so he no longer has to manage the device every day.

Device context and safety notes

The HeartMate 3 is Abbott’s widely used LVAD platform for people with advanced heart failure, according to Abbott. Safety watchers have also flagged procedural risks. In 2024 the FDA issued an advisory and recall involving certain HeartMate 3 implant kit components over concerns that blood could leak or air could enter the system during implantation, according to the FDA. Surgeons point out that these notices focus on specific steps in the implant process and say that meticulous surgical technique, along with close outpatient follow-up, is critical for anyone living with a ventricular assist device.

A Savannah family, a referral center and daily life with a pump

Miles’s mother, Amy Brigdon, told hospital staff that her son had reached a point where “there was nothing they could do for him” before the Emory team agreed to take on his case, according to the hospital’s account. Emory notes that its mechanical circulatory support program performs hundreds of VAD implants and serves as a transplant referral center for the broader region. For the Miles family, that expertise now translates into a demanding but familiar home routine: cleaning and dressing the driveline exit sites, staying on top of battery changes and power supplies, and making frequent clinic visits, all balanced against the relief of sleeping in their own beds and letting Andrew see his friends while he waits for a donor match.

What this means for other patients

Physicians say the Double VAD or paired-pump strategy is still rare, but it is drawing attention as an option for younger patients who have complex immunologic profiles or biventricular failure. The technique has been discussed in specialty forums, including a webinar on emerging LVAD technologies hosted by CTSNet. Centers that can handle both the demanding surgery and the intensive outpatient care may be able to offer a bridge-to-transplant path to patients who previously had almost no options. Experts caution, however, that the approach depends on strict infection prevention and around-the-clock caregiver support.

For now, Miles and his family are keeping their focus on the everyday details of living with a mechanical heart while he waits for a matching donor. His surgeons say the endgame is still a transplant that would free him from the constant work of managing mechanical support. His case underscores how surgical innovation at high-volume centers can give some patients a second shot at life when the usual playbook has run out.