[Lewis Thomson (OP)]

Donald has posed this question to us at the office,

"What are the technical challenges that need to be considered before the first human attempt to to a heart transplant in an adult blue whale? The blue whale has a resting heart rate of two beats per minute, and that cerebral cooling perfected by Soviet physicians in lieu of a cardiac bypass machine that permitted hours of asystole, what's the hold-up?"

Can you help him find answers to this situation...

[Origin]

what's the hold-up?

I would say there are 2 main hold ups.  First is there is no reason to try such a thing.  Secondly, would be the hundreds of  millions of dollars in infrastructure that would be needed to do the operation.
 

[Bored chemist]

According to "someone on the web"  A blue whale’s heart is about 5 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 5 feet tall. It weighs about 400 pounds..
So you need a cardiac  surgeon who is used to using a fork lift.
I guess a keen diver might be able to do the job...

Other problems would include ensuring adequate air for the whale while you worked.

Getting informed consent...?

[evan_au]

A blue whale’s heart is...

I visited a museum where they had a supposedly "full sized" blue whale heart, which was about the size of a small car.
- They were using it as a a children's climbing toy; kids could climb in the veins and come out the arteries...
- This sounds larger than the reference found by BC
- I didn't look inside to see what they had done with the heart valves...

[Bored chemist]

reference found by BC

I should have cited it.
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2015/08/31/how-big-is-a-blue-whales-heart/

[alancalverd]

The engineering aspects are solvable. I would consult with large-animal cardiac surgeons (I have clients who work with horses and elephants) and industrial lifting, handling and pumping engineers - nothing they haven't already seen in a coal mine.

The difficult problem is finding a recently-deceased tissue-matched donor whose heart is in a better condition than that of the recipient, and identifying the recipient in the first place.

[Bored chemist]

nothing they haven't already seen in a coal mine.

Swapping inby and outby that frequently would be... odd.

[Bored chemist]

The difficult problem is finding a recently-deceased tissue-matched donor

That's what donor cards are for.
It's just as much a "solved problem" as the others. :-)

[alancalverd]

nothing they haven't already seen in a coal mine.

Swapping inby and outby that frequently would be... odd.

Nothing particularly special. Imagine a 10 kW dual sump pump with the motors pulsed and alternating rather than running in parallel. I worked on the control system for a human-sized heart replacement some years back. Come to think of it, we've just halved the problem by making an artificial heart for a whale from a standard piece of mining kit and some simple electronics - no need for a donor!

Truly, this is the forum for making the impossible trivial.

[Colin2B]

Imagine a 10 kW dual sump pump with the motors pulsed and alternating rather than running in parallel. ........we've just halved the problem by making an artificial heart for a whale from a standard piece of mining kit and some simple electronics - no need for a donor!

Truly, this is the forum for making the impossible trivial.

Mmmmm, does help somewhat that you are replacing something the size of a small car.
Power source?

[alancalverd]

Power source?

Krill, of course. Lots of it.

To keep its energy up, an adult blue whale can consume as many as 40 million krill per day or 8,000 lbs. of krill daily!

I may have overestimated the pump capacity. Scaling up from a human heart, 2 kW should suffice, so this may be a job for the fire brigade rather than mining engineers.

[Bored chemist]

nothing they haven't already seen in a coal mine.

Swapping inby and outby that frequently would be... odd.

Nothing particularly special. Imagine a 10 kW dual sump pump with the motors pulsed and alternating rather than running in parallel. I worked on the control system for a human-sized heart replacement some years back. Come to think of it, we've just halved the problem by making an artificial heart for a whale from a standard piece of mining kit and some simple electronics - no need for a donor!

Truly, this is the forum for making the impossible trivial.

You seem to have forgotten that whales breathe.

[alancalverd]

Obviously. Due to being mammals, with fairly standard-pattern mammalian hearts.

It seems that a beached whale has difficulty breathing so we have two options: perform the operation under water, or lay the patient on its back, which is the conventional approach for a heart transplant anyway. However since whales can hold their breath for an hour or more, oxygenation may not be required but we will need a bypass pump to circulate the blood while we dissect out the old heart and secure the new one in place.

There is plenty of whaling industry experience in making flesh incisions and splitting the sternum, but retraction looks like a job for two JCBs and some Acrow props. Closing with soluble stitches isn't an option so we'll need some kind of staple gun.

The power source question is left as an exercise for the reader. I never managed to produce a wholly satisfactory longterm solution for the human model but given the vast quantities of oxygen and electrolytes available, I'm sure someone can make a neat fuel cell.