Phenomenology and Artificial Hearts

This dissertation seeks to answer the question: how is lived experience conditioned by receiving an artificial heart? It is informed by a theoretical analysis of these devices and an extensive literature of patient and consumer experiences of living with an artificial heart. Patients for whom artificial heart treatment is indicated and their carers deserve to know the ways in which their lives will be altered by receiving a device. Using the philosophical approach of phenomenology, this dissertation develops and applies a framework for identifying, articulating, and organising the experience of living with an artificial heart.