[The artificial heart - wishful thinking or alternative?].

The development of the highly specialised cardiological diagnostics furthered the morphological and functional analysis of the congenital and acquired heart diseases. Parallel to this the therapeutic repertoire of the cardiosurgery increased. Successful animal-experimental investigations with artificial hearts and survival times up to several months allow as a justified aim the imagination that the artificial heart by all means may be an alternative to the heart transplantation also in man. This high aim demands further intensive work concerning the optimum form of artificial hearts, better qualities of the material, miniaturised units of motion and regulation with a possibly implantable or at least easily portable source of energy.