Man survives 100 days with Titanium Heart – the world's first

The Australian in his 40s became the first in the world to leave the hospital with an artificial heart made of titanium. The device was used as a stop for people with heart failure waiting for the donor's heart, and previous recipients of this type of artificial heart remained in hospitals in the US while it was installed.

The man lived with the device for more than three months before undergoing surgery to receive the donated human heart. The man is recovering well, according to a statement from St. Vincent's Hospital Sydney in Australia.

The Australian is the sixth person worldwide to receive a device known as the Bivacor, but the first one to live for more than a month.

“This is certainly an important development in this field,” says Julian Smith, a cardiac surgeon at the Victorian Heart Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

“It's incredibly innovative,” says Sarah Aitken, a vascular surgeon at the University of Sydney, but she adds that there are still many unanswered questions about the ultimate cost of people and devices that can achieve it. “This type of research is very difficult because it's so expensive,” says Aitken.

The latest success will help researchers understand how to deal with this device in the real world, says Joseph Rogers, a cardiologist and president of the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. “They weren't constantly monitored by their medical team,” says Rogers, who led the first test of the device in the US last year.

In all cases, vivacor was used as a temporary measure until the donor's heart was available. Some cardiologists say it could be a permanent option for people who are not eligible for a transplant due to their age or other health conditions, but the idea still needs to be tested in exams. In the United States, nearly 7 million adults live with heart failure, and in 2023, about 4,500 heart transplants were performed, partly due to a shortage of donors.

Hanging rotor

Vivacall was invented by Daniel Timmus, a biomedical engineer who founded a company named after a device with offices in Huntington Beach, California and Southport, Australia.

This device is a complete heart replacement, with a magnetically suspended rotor acting as a continuous pump that propels blood with normal pulses throughout the body. A cord with a tunnel under the skin connects the device to an external portable controller that runs on the battery during the day and can connect it to electricity at night.

Many mechanical heart devices support the left side of the heart and usually work by putting blood in a bag and sucking it. However, these devices have many components and often fail. Vivacoll has only one moving part, but in theory there is less mechanical wear issues, says Rogers.

US trials