Man sets record, survives 100 days with artificial heart

VANGUARD

An Australian man in his 40s has survived 100 days with a titanium heart. He is the first person globally to do so. The artificial heart serves as a temporary solution for heart failure patients. They use it while awaiting a donor heart.
Previous patients with this heart stayed in US hospitals. The Australian man received his heart at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. He later had surgery for a donated human heart. The hospital reports that he is recovering well. He is the sixth person to receive the BiVACOR device, but the first to live with it over a month.

In all cases, the BiVACOR was used as a temporary measure until a donor heart became available. Some cardiologists say that it could become a permanent option for people not eligible for transplants because of their age or other health conditions, although the idea still needs to be tested in trials.

BiVACOR was invented by biomedical engineer Daniel Timms, who founded a company named after the device, with offices in Huntington Beach, California, and Southport, Australia. The device is a total heart replacement and works as a continuous pump in which a magnetically suspended rotor propels blood in regular pulses throughout the body. A cord tunnelled under the skin connects the device to an external, portable controller that runs on batteries by day and can be plugged into the mains at night.

Australian researchers and doctors behind the operation announced 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, still in the early stages of clinical study, has been designed for patients with end-stage biventricular heart failure, which generally develops after other conditions – most commonly heart attack and coronary heart disease, but also other diseases such as diabetes – have damaged or weakened the heart so that it cannot effectively pump blood through the body effectively.

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