The artificial heart machine, also known as a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, has been used to keep patients alive until they receive a heart transplant. But there is a shortage of hearts for transplantation, and in the US, LVADs are now being implanted as a long-term treatment for heart failure, just as a dialysis machine replaces a kidney.
开发成本必然会传递到药品价格方面，当一种药物只能够使数量相对较少的病人受益时, 价格会非常之高。例如，高雪氏病(Gaucher’s disease)，是一种罕见的严重遗传病，更严重的情形，通常会使患者在儿童时期夭折。由于一种叫做伊米苷酶(Cerezyme )药物, 现在有这种疾病的人几乎可以过正常的生活了，但它的成本是每年175,000美元。