Six months after surgeons implanted a ventricular assist device (VAD) in Tim Ritchie to support his failing heart, the 34-year-old father of three walked out of the Medical Center with a recuperated heart and no heart pump.

The fact that Ritchie’s pump was removed after his own heart recovered was a significant milestone in his busy life and in the history of the Medical Center’s use of mechanical circulatory support. Of the more than 350 heart pumps implanted by Penn State Hershey Heart and Vascular Institute, only one other patient was able to recover full function of her own heart.

Unless they are healthy enough to be eligible for a heart transplant and lucky enough to find a suitable donor, nearly all heart failure patients needing a mechanical heart pump to survive will need it for the rest of their lives—it is considered their destination therapy. But experts within the Heart and Vascular Institute are finding ways to nurse ailing hearts back to health.

“Only a small percentage of patients suffering the same type of heart failure Tim experienced are able to be removed from VADs after recovering full function of their hearts,” explained Walter Pae Jr., M.D., Ritchie’s surgeon and the Heart and Vascular Institute’s director, cardiac surgery. Ritchie’s doctors aren’t certain what originally caused his heart to begin failing in October, 2007, but they believe it may have been a virus.

“It was kind of overwhelming to think that it was possible that my own heart would heal,” commented Ritchie. “Now to be going home without the need for a transplant feels pretty good.” Ritchie is once again leading a full life with his wife and three young daughters in Jonestown, Pa.