Unnamed patient becomes first outside of US to receive maglev artificial heart

The first Australian implant of a Total Artificial Heart (TAH) made by BiVACOR – founded by Australian inventor Dr Daniel Timms – was an “unmitigated clinical success”, according to the Artificial Heart Frontiers Program (AHFP.)

The Artificial Heart Frontiers Program, led by Monash University, said on Wednesday that an unnamed Australian received the implant on November 22 last year in a six-hour procedure led by St Vincent’s cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon Dr Paul Jansz. The patient then spent “a few weeks” in ICU and eventually became “the first patient in the world to be discharged from hospital” with a BiVACOR TAH.      

A donor heart replaced the TAH on Thursday March 6, and, at 105 days, the patient survived with the device for a record duration between implant and transplant. The patient is in his 40s and “recovering well”.

His is the sixth ever and the first non-US human surgery involving a BiVACOR heart, with the first occurring July 9 last year at the Texas Heart Institute in the Texas Medical Center. 

“Being able to bring Australia along this journey and be part of the first clinical trials is immensely important to me and something that I set out to do from the very beginning,” said Timms on Wednesday.

“It is incredibly rewarding to see our device deliver extended support to the first Australian patient. The unique design and features of the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart translate into an unmatched safety profile, and it’s exhilarating to see decades of work come to fruition.”

The implant is the first in a series of procedures planned in Australia as part of the AHFP and benefited from a $50 million grant through the federal Medical Research Future Fund.

Such hearts are described as a fist-sized “non-pulsatile” replacement heart that moves blood via a spinning, magnetically-levitated disc, its only moving part. 

BiCAVOR is the life’s work of Timms, a doctor of mechanical engineering, who began the work during his studies at the Queensland University of Technology and moved to Houston in 2012 to further development alongside the city’s medtech experts and heart surgeons.

Picture: credit Monash/BiVACOR

Further reading

MRFF awards $50 million to Australian team developing artificial heart

New program aims to commercialise total artificial heart within six years

Tiny Perth startup takes on medical moonshot