The Midwesterner given an artificial heart on July 1 has been publicly identified, and his condition has been upgraded from critical to serious. He is John Nabors, 47, of Paul's Valley, Okla.
The patient's name was not released until Thursday at the request of family members, said Jess Gomez, spokesman for LDS Hospital, where Nabors underwent the operation. The total artificial heart may be used only as a bridge to transplantation of a human heart once a donor organ is found, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration rules.Nabors went into shock and respiratory failure because of heart failure while in Baptist Hospital, Oklahoma City. He was flown to LDS Hospital, where the Utah Transplantation Affiliated Hospitals team implanted the artificial heart in a seven-hour operation.