Patient With Artificial Heart Smashes Survival Record

An Australian man has become a medical marvel thanks to his groundbreaking artificial heart. The man’s doctors reported this week that he was the first person in the world to be discharged from the hospital with an implant developed to completely replace the heart’s functioning. Doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney performed the experimental procedure last November, installing the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart into a man suffering from severe heart failure. Though the man wasn’t the first human to receive the technology, he was the first to live with it long enough to be released from the hospital—over 100 days. The implant acted as a bridge to a typical heart transplant, which the man obtained earlier this March. There are existing implants today that can perform some of an ailing heart’s functions, at least for a time. But the BiVACOR heart—invented by native Australian and biomedical engineer Daniel Timms—is designed to fully take over the heart’s many critical functions. I ... Read full article.