In November 2024, a man in his 40s, choosing to remain anonymous, made medical history as the first person discharged from a hospital with a fully artificial heart. At St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, surgeons performed a groundbreaking six-hour procedure, implanting the titanium-crafted BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH) to save him from severe heart failure. After weeks in intensive care and further monitoring, he left the hospital in early February. For 105 days, he lived with the artificial heart pumping in his chest until March 6, when a donor heart became available for transplant. His doctors report he’s recovering strongly, an outcome to this innovative technology.
Let’s go over some basic information about artificial hearts.
What is Total Artificial Heart?
A total artificial heart is a device implanted in the chest to replace the heart’s damaged ventricles and valves. Made from durable and flexible polyurethane, it functions as a pump to maintain blood circulation. An external machine, known as a driver, controls the pump to ensure blood flows properly throughout the body. Primarily used as a temporary solution, it serves as a bridge to transplant, keeping patients stable while they await a donor heart.
What is a Titanium Heart?
A titanium heart refers to an advanced artificial heart, like the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart, crafted from durable titanium. Implanted to replace a failing heart, it pumps blood using a magnetically levitated rotor, offering a temporary lifeline until transplant.
BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart
The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart is a new kind of heart pump made by a company started by an Australian engineer, Daniel Timms. It helps people whose hearts don’t work well by using a spinning part that floats with magnets to push blood to the body and lungs. Unlike older heart machines, it’s small, strong, and doesn’t need valves. It runs on a battery and a control box outside the body, making blood flow like a real heart does.
Right now, it’s used to keep people alive until they can get a new heart from a donor. It was first put in a person in July 2024 in Texas, and since then, it’s helped several patients in the U.S. and recent one in Australia.
Brief History of Artificial Hearts
The development of artificial hearts dates back to the mid-20th century when scientists and engineers sought mechanical solutions for end-stage heart failure. In 1982, Dr. Barney Clark became the first person to receive a permanent total artificial heart, the Jarvik-7. Although he lived for 112 days, the bulky external components and complications highlighted the need for improvements. Over the following decades, advances in biomaterials, miniaturization, and pump technology led to more refined devices.
In the early 2000s, the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart became the first FDA-approved device for patients awaiting heart transplants, demonstrating improved survival rates. Meanwhile, researchers explored rotary pump designs to mimic natural blood flow better. The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart represents a major leap in this evolution, replacing traditional pulsatile pumps with a compact, magnetically levitated rotor, reducing wear and tear while ensuring continuous blood circulation.
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From early experimental implants to modern-day breakthroughs, artificial hearts have transformed from short-term solutions into increasingly viable long-term alternatives. As technology advances, future designs may one day provide a permanent replacement for biological hearts, offering hope to patients worldwide who lack access to suitable donor organs.
