The decision to use a fully implantable IPG or an RF unit depends on several considerations.

Artificial hearts, now fully implantable, cause blood clots and disabling strokes.

Just months earlier, in January, the institute had awarded four contracts to teams working on a new generation of fully implantable hearts.

It is fully implantable within a patient, due to a combination of advances in miniaturization, biosensors, plastics and energy transfer.

Surgeons announced here today that they had placed the first fully implantable artificial heart in a human being.

Over the next several years, Bakken and Medtronic went on to work with other doctors to develop fully implantable pacemakers, but they also veered toward bankruptcy.

In 2008, Carpentier announced a fully implantable artificial heart will be ready for clinical trial by 2011, and for alternative to transplant in 2013.

Dr. Slepian said that CardioWest weighed less in patients than fully implantable artificial hearts.

The limited approval was issued after decades of research, largely financed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, to develop a fully implantable artificial heart.

A form of surgery involving an intramedullar, fully implantable, electronically-motorised limb-lengthening implant, called "Fitbone", is a technologically advanced, though relatively complex, device.