Breakthrough titanium heart transplant keeps man alive for days

A 58-year-old American man has become the first person to survive for several days with a metal heart after his own went into “end-stage” heart failure.

Medical technology company BiVACOR has developed a titanium heart that works on the same scientific principles as high-speed magnetic levitation (MagLev) trains.

On July 9, surgeons at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center in the United States transplanted a BiVACOR heart into a 58-year-old man without any complications.

The patient survived on the artificial organ for eight days before receiving a donor heart.

“We are incredibly proud to mark the first successful human implantation of our total artificial heart (TAH),” said Daniel Timms, co-founder of BiVACOR.

Heart failure is a growing global condition that affects an estimated 26 million people worldwide and occurs when the heart muscle is no longer able to pump blood normally.

In some people with this disease, the left and right ventricles of the heart, which pump blood from the heart to the body and lungs, begin to lose their function.

Without urgent medical intervention, the outlook for people with ventricular failure is bleak, the researchers say.

The newly developed valve-less heart, about the size of a fist, is designed as a temporary replacement for patients with severe heart failure who are not recommended to use assist devices.

An artificial heart has a pump “with a single moving part” instead of valves, and it replaces the function of both ventricles of a failing heart to supply blood to the lungs and the rest of the body.

BiVACOR's website states that the product is suitable for “most men and women” and is “capable of providing adequate cardiac output to exercising adult males.”

The device's only moving part is designed so that it never comes into contact with any other surface, eliminating the possibility of mechanical wear, the researchers said.

The design also allows ample space for blood flow, “minimizing trauma and providing a durable, reliable and biocompatible heart replacement,” BiVACOR said.

The company says the entire device is powered by a small, portable external controller that is ejected from the stomach.

Doctors say the metallic artificial heart could help improve the survival rates of patients with severe heart failure waiting for a heart donor.

“The global impact of a commercially viable, long-term mechanical replacement of a failing human heart would be enormous,” the scientists wrote in a summary of the ongoing clinical study testing the heart.