Patient with an artificial heart shattered survival recording

An Australian man has become a medical miracle thanks to his groundbreaking artificial heart. The man's doctors reported this week that he was the first person in the world to be developed with an implant that was developed to completely replace the function of the heart.

The doctors of the St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney carried out the experimental intervention last November and installed the Bivacor total artificial heart into a man suffering from severe heart failure. Although the man was not the first person who received 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 that the man had received at the beginning of March.

Today there are existing implants that can carry out some functions of a sick heart for at least a while. But the Bivacor heart, which was created by the local Australian and biomedical engineer Daniel Timms, is designed in such a way that they completely take over the many critical functions of the heart. It is intended for people with heart failure in the final stage and is equipped with an external rechargeable battery, which is connected to the heart by a wire. The battery only takes four hours, although the developers hope that future iterations can be upgraded to a more convenient wireless charger.

The implant has achieved early clinical studies, with the sixth and the latest patient being a man from New South Wales in the forties. The previous five patients, all in the USA, only had the implant for a short time before they received heart transplants, short enough that they were never released from their hospital stay. The disconception of the man and his survival actor over 100 days with the implant are both record -breaking successes. According to his doctors, he is now recovering from his heart transplant, which was carried out at the beginning of this month.

“We have worked on this moment for years and we are incredibly proud to be the first team in Australia to carry out this procedure,” said Paul Jansz, a cardiothoraker and transplant surgeon at St. Vincent's, to The Guardian.

Although the Bivacor heart is currently being tested as a treatment to expand the survival of the patients until they can receive a donor heart, Timms and his colleagues ultimately hope that the device can become a long-lasting replacement for the heart and a suitable alternative to heart transplant. It is a goal that is not easy to achieve because the patients live according to a medium -sized remedy of 12 to 13 years after a donated heart. But for the time being, early progress is certainly encouraging. It is expected that more patients will receive their own implants through a program this year, which is led by researchers from Monash University in Australia.

“The Bivacor Totficial Heart heads in a completely new ball game for heart transplants in both Australia and internationally,” said Chris Hayward, cardiologist at St. Vincent, who monitored the health of the man, the Guardian. “Within the next decade, we will see that the artificial heart becomes an alternative for patients who cannot wait for a donor heart or if a donor heart is simply not available.”

Artificial implants such as the Bivacor heart are not the only up -and -coming technology that could support or replace the limited supply of donor organs one day. Elsewhere, scientists are working on developing genetically modified swine organs that can be safely tolerated by the human body.