The pump is 200 grams and it is inside you. Everything else, you carry.
A controller and two batteries, on your body, every hour you are awake. The bag they sent you home with works. Whether you can still stand it by Thursday is a different question, and it is the one that decides how often you leave the house.
Your VAD team is the authority on your equipment. What follows is about comfort and wear, not about how your device works. If your team told you something different, go with your team.
What You Are Actually Carrying
Two 14 volt lithium-ion batteries and a controller. Call it a kilogram once the holster is on. That does not sound like much written down. It is on you for sixteen hours a day, which is where it starts to count.
Three things decide whether a setup works, and none of them is how it looks in the catalogue:
- Where the weight sits. Split across both sides, held close to the torso.
- Whether anything pulls at the driveline. Nothing presses, rubs, or tugs at the exit site.
- Whether you can sit down in it. Plenty of arrangements pass standing and fail the moment you get in a car.
Every option below is a different answer to those three questions. None of them wins outright.
Vests
The vest is what most programmes send people home in. The reason is good: one battery on each side, held flat against the ribs, weight off your waist completely. For all-day wear it is hard to beat. It is also the setup people come back to after trying everything else.
The complaint is heat. A vest is another layer, and in July it is the layer you notice. The other complaint is that it reads as medical equipment under a thin shirt, which matters more to some people than others.
A custom or tailored vest solves the fit problem and not the heat one. Worth knowing before you spend on it.
One thing worth clearing up, because it sends people to entirely the wrong place: a LifeVest is not LVAD equipment. That is ZOLL's wearable defibrillator, worn against the skin to detect and treat a dangerous heart rhythm. Different device, different job, different manufacturer. If that is what you came looking for, this is the wrong shop and we would rather say so.
Belts and Waist Packs
A battery belt moves everything to your waist. It is cooler than a vest, it is quicker to get on, and it disappears under a jacket.
The tradeoff is posture. Two batteries on one hip pulls you sideways. You feel it by mid-afternoon rather than immediately, which is exactly what makes it easy to ignore. So if you use a belt, split the load. A waist belt with a battery pouch on each side is a different garment from one with a single pouch, and the difference shows up in your lower back.
Belts also sit exactly where a car seatbelt sits. Test that before you rely on it.
Shoulder Bags and Backpacks
A shoulder bag is the standard alternative to the vest, and for short trips it is the easiest thing in the house: pick it up, go.
For anything longer, a single strap on one shoulder is the same posture problem as the one-hip belt, with a swinging bag added. Equipment that swings pulls on the driveline and catches on door handles, chair arms, and seatbelts. A messenger bag has the same issue.
A backpack splits the weight properly and is genuinely better for a long day out, a hospital visit, or travel. It is worse for anything where you need to reach your controller quickly, because the controller is now behind you. Most people who use one keep the controller forward on a belt and put everything else on their back.
An equipment bag, meaning the larger one that holds spare batteries and the charger rather than what you wear, is a separate purchase and worth treating as one.
Sleeping
Most people should not be sleeping on batteries at all.
The usual instruction is to move to wall power overnight, and the reason is blunt: a low battery alarm is precisely the sound you sleep through. Check your own team's guidance, because this is the kind of thing programmes are specific about.
So a sleeping belt is not really solving a carrying problem. It is solving a slack problem: keeping the driveline from wrapping, catching, or taking your weight when you roll over. That is worth solving. But the answer is a light band that manages the cable, not a harness built to hold a kilogram you should not be wearing in bed anyway.
Prone is out, to protect the exit site. Back and sides are fine. Keep a torch, a charged set, and your backup controller within reach of the bed, because power cuts do not check the time.
Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise is encouraged with an LVAD. Walking, gardening, golf, and more than you would guess besides. Your team sets your limits.
What changes is that movement now has a cost your equipment pays. A workout belt is a narrower, tighter, higher-sitting version of a normal belt for one reason: anything that bounces is pulling at the driveline every time it does. Snug and high beats loose and comfortable here, which is the opposite of the rule for the rest of the day.
Sweat is the other half of it. Whatever sits against you during exercise needs to come off and wash, which is an argument for the cheap dedicated thing rather than the good one.
What Goes in the Emergency Bag
Separate from what you wear, and the one people assemble late.
Your programme gives you the authoritative list and it is the one to follow. What is on most of them: a backup controller, a charged spare set of batteries, your chargers, driveline dressing supplies, your device ID and VAD team contact numbers, and a torch.
Keep it packed. A bag you have to assemble is a bag you leave behind.
Built-In Pockets Instead
Every option above is something you put on over your clothes. The other approach is clothing that already has somewhere for the equipment to go.
Pockets sewn into the garment hold the batteries flat against the body. Nothing hangs off a strap. So all three questions get answered at once: weight split across both sides, nothing swinging, nothing pulling at the exit site. And it stops looking like equipment, which for most people is the actual goal.
Our LVAD shirts and tank tops carry the controller and batteries in reinforced pockets under ordinary clothes. The shorts and leggings do the same lower down, which some people prefer in warm weather or overnight. The shirts collection has them together.
The honest limit: a garment has to be washed, so you need more than one, and that is a real cost a vest does not have. Most people end up with both. A vest or belt for the days it suits, garments for the days they want to forget about it.
If You Are on a HeartWare Device
Medtronic stopped distributing the HVAD in June 2021. Roughly 4,000 people were already implanted with one and are still living with it, supported by an ongoing Medtronic programme.
Everything above about weight, driveline slack, and posture applies to you. The dimensions do not. Bags and holders sized for a HeartMate 3 controller are not interchangeable (the label will rarely tell you this). Check fit against your own hardware, and ask your coordinator.
Who This Isn't For
If you were implanted in the last few weeks, do not make this your project. Use what your team gave you until the routine is automatic and your exit site has settled. Carrying gear can be changed at any point. The habits are worth building first.
And if what you actually want is for the equipment to be lighter, none of this delivers that. It moves the weight somewhere you mind less. That is the whole of what any of it does, including ours.
The Point
Nobody gets this right on the first try. The vest is too warm, the belt pulls, the bag swings, and somewhere in the third or fourth attempt you find the thing you stop thinking about. That is the one. There is no way to shortcut it from a product page, which is why most people end up owning two or three.
More on running time and spares in the LVAD battery guide, and the LVAD clothing FAQ covers HeartMate III and HeartWare compatibility, HSA eligibility, and sizing. Our guide to HeartMate 3 accessories goes wider than carrying.
The equipment is not going to get smaller. Where you put it is the part you still get to choose.