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Pondering the large group of people waiting for heart transplants, Dr. Steven W. Boyce of Chevy Chase likened the situation to a Super Bowl game without the most important part of the action.

"You've got 85,000 people in the stands, the two best teams all ready to play, you go out with the referee, flip a coin…and then they finally see there's no football," Boyce said.

Determined to create a better life for people waiting for transplants or who aren't good candidates for them, Boyce, who works as a heart transplant surgeon at Washington Hospital Center, helped pioneer a new implant that fits in the palm of his hand. He performed the first surgery in the United States to implant the device about three weeks ago.

The new implant is a "third generation" Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) and first received regulatory approval for European patients about two years ago. Utilizing a magnetically-suspended, titanium rotation device that moves at 2,000 to 3,000 RPMs with no mechanical bearings, it pumps blood from the left side in the heart into the aorta, which in turn circulates blood from the heart into the rest of the body.

Boyce served as the chief scientific advisor for Heartware, the company that developed the implant.

"It basically takes over function of the left side of the heart," Boyce said.

The device is small enough to sit next to the heart atop the diaphragm, eliminating the need for more complicated surgery or larger, more cumbersome LVADs and other devices.

"Not too many people are going to raise their hands to say they want their heart taken out and replaced by a machine," Boyce said.

The LVAD, which comes with a patient-operated battery pack and control device, allows patients with advanced congestive heart conditions to lead relatively normal everyday lives.

A 2005 Scientific Sessions abstract from the American Heart Association showed that previous LVADs reduced the risk of death for patients in end-stage heart failure by 50 percent six to 12 months after surgery. The lifespan of the average patient was extended between three to 10 months.

"An LVAD can help a weak heart and ‘buy time' for the patient," reads part of a statement from the AHA.

A few LVAD patients recover completely and no longer required heart transplants. Patients are also put on low-dosage blood thinners.

More than a year after implant surgery for the third-generation LVAD, 91 percent of patients in Europe and Australia are "alive and well," according to Boyce.

Boyce said his first surgery with the new LVAD went very well, and that the patient, a man in his 40s with an ongoing heart condition, is recovering without problems. Aside from avoiding contact sports and magnetic resonance imaging exams (MRIs), the patient should be able to leave a relatively normal life outside the hospital and do everything from play a round of golf to drive a car.

"This is a technology that will offer many humans a chance at high-quality life that they don't currently have," Boyce said.

The device should be universally available in about three years, after FDA clinical trials. In the interim, Boyce said it will likely only be available in 12 to 15 heart centers in the United States.

Boyce said one of the main goals of designing the LVAD was to not only make it smaller than previous such devices, but one that could be implanted with relative comfort and ease by the "spectrum of technical capabilities" of health care professionals.

"My role was to develop a way to, with the engineers, have this thing implanted so that a garden-variety cardiac surgeon anywhere in the world would be able to have the technical comfort and expertise to install it," he said.

For now, Boyce is thrilled with the results so far right in the hospital where he works.

"It's been an interesting ride…to get this off the ground. But I think we're there," he said.