An Australian patient has become the first in the world to leave hospital with a levitating titanium heart, in a major step towards halving deaths from cardiac failure and establishing a world-leading medical manufacturing industry on Australian soil. Source: SMH.
The ambitious procedure, performed in November, was announced as an “unmitigated clinical success” yesterday, after the man in his 40s, who has chosen not to be identified, survived long enough with the device to receive a conventional heart transplant earlier this month.
The man, a patient at St Vincent’s in Darlinghurst, Sydney, was experiencing severe heart failure and would not have survived without the implant.
It was the first time the BiVacor total artificial heart implant, devised by Queenslander Daniel Timms more than 20 years ago, had been implanted in a patient in Australia.
Four patients have received the implant in the United States since July, but this was the first time anyone left the hospital with the device in place.
“This is a complete game changer,” said Paul Jansz, the cardiothoracic surgeon who installed the implant in a six-hour surgery.
“It’s a device that solves a lot of the problems that we have with mechanical circulatory support,” Dr Jansz said.
With the device implanted, the man left hospital in February in an Uber with Mr Timms, who had flown from the US to be by his side.
The man spent more than 100 days with the device in place, the longest of any recipient so far.
Mr Timms said the man could not feel the heart inside his chest, and was able to walk down the street and go shopping in the month before he received his donated heart.
He is now recovering well in hospital from the conventional transplant, his doctor at St Vincent’s, Professor Chris Hayward, said.
FULL STORY
‘Complete game changer’: Man leaves Sydney hospital with artificial heart in world first (By Angus Thomson, Sydney Morning Herald)
RELATED COVERAGE
Australia’s first durable total artificial heart implant announced as a success (St Vincent’s Health Australia)
