LNP – Australian man survives 100 days with artificial heart in world-first success

Sydney surgeons ‘enormously proud’ after patient in his 40s receives the Australian-designed implant designed as a bridge before donor heart

An Australian man with heart failure has become the first person in the world to walk out of a hospital with a total artificial heart implant, The Guardian reported.

The Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced on Wednesday that the implant had been an “unmitigated clinical success” after the man lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor heart transplant in early March.

The BiVACOR total artificial heart, invented by Queensland-born Dr Daniel Timms, is the world’s first implantable rotary blood pump that can act as a complete replacement for a human heart, using magnetic levitation technology to replicate the natural blood flow of a healthy heart.

The implant is designed as a bridge to keep patients alive until a donor heart transplant becomes available, but BiVACOR’s long-term ambition is for implant recipients to be able to live with their device without needing a heart transplant.

The patient, a man in his 40s from New South Wales who was experiencing severe heart failure, volunteered to become the first recipient of the total artificial heart in Australia and the sixth in the world.

The first five implants took place last year in the US and all received donor hearts before being discharged from hospital, with the longest time in between implant and transplant 27 days.

The Australian patient received the device on 22 November at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney in a six-hour procedure led by the cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon Paul Jansz.