In a world first, an Australian man spent over 100 days with an artificial titanium heart in his chest while waiting for a human heart transplant. The man, who is in his 40s and hails from New South Wales, has chosen to remain anonymous. In November 2024, suffering from severe heart failure and with no donor heart available, he volunteered to be fitted with an artificial heart at St. Vincent’s Hospital Sydney, where transplant cardiologists performed a six-hour surgery to implant the titanium device.
The patient was discharged in February 2025 and remained under the close supervision of doctors, yet he was able to live a relatively normal life at home until he finally received a donor heart the following month. Doctors say that he is recovering well after the transplant.
In addition to being the longest period of time that someone has survived with a titanium heart (105 days), this is also the first case in which the patient was able to leave the hospital and go home with the device implanted.
The device, the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH), was invented by Australian biomedical engineer Daniel Timms, who was inspired to create it after his father’s death from heart failure. The BiVACOR TAH weighs around 1.5 pounds (680 grams) and takes the place of both heart ventricles, pumping blood throughout the body at regular intervals. Its only moving part is a levitated rotor suspended by magnets, so it experiences very little wear and tear. The power for the rotor comes from an external device that connects through the patient's chest and has a 4-hour battery life; it can also be plugged into an electrical outlet. Timms, the inventor, hopes that eventually the BiVACOR TAH will be able to operate without the need for external charging.
Although it has not yet been approved for general use, the Total Artificial Heart's success suggests that it could eventually become viable as a long-term option for people waiting for a suitable donor heart. There is a huge need for such devices, as cardiovascular diseases are the world’s leading cause of death, and demand for heart transplants usually outpaces the availability of donor organs. Biomedical engineers and transplant cardiologists are hopeful that devices like the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart might one day reduce or even replace the need for human heart transplants.
The (heart)beat goes on:
- The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart was successfully tested last year on five U.S. patients, all men in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, who were waiting for donor transplants. However, unlike the Australian case, the U.S. patients spent less than a month with the BiVACOR TAH implanted before receiving a donor heart, and they never left the hospital during that period.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration now plans to expand the trial to include more patients. Researchers think that if this is successful, the TAH could be made widely available within four or five years.
- Nearly 7 million Americans suffer from heart failure, a serious condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood to support the body’s various organs.
