First Fully Artificial Titanium Heart Implanted Inside a Patient

Humanity has come a long way as humanity when it comes to heart surgery. With stents, pacemakers, and mechanical pumps that support the most important organ’s function, as well as heart transplants, people with heart issues can live longer than ever before. However, we always had a fantasy of a fully mechanical heart, one that would replace the real one. 

Well, that dream is now a reality, as BiVACOR, an Australian company, has developed the world’s fully artificial heart. Made from titanium and using magnetic levitation, the same technology as maglev trains, this heart is seen as a permanent replacement for the regular heart. The TAH (Total Artificial Heart) is the result of a decade-long development process and is now implanted inside a patient at the Texas Heart Institute, overseen by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The artificial heart is made from titanium, a metal that is perhaps the best choice for medicinal implants. Meanwhile, it uses a biventricular rotary blood pump with a single moving part and a magnetically levitating rotor, which can replace both ventricles of the heart. BiVACOR decided to use a maglev rotor because it has no friction, which dramatically improves its service life, as opposed to polymer diaphragms in other solutions.

The TAH can also pump 12 liter of blood per minute – which is more than a living heart can muster when the human rests. As such, according to BiVACOR, it can even allow an adult male to engage in exercise. Even so, the company says that the TAH is not designed to permanently replace a human’s heart, and instead, it’s designed to be a stop-gap solution while the patient is waiting for a heart transplant surgery. Still, it’s a huge leap toward mechanical hearts that could fully replace the hearts of people with cardiac failure in the future. Until then, it can help thousands of people currently waiting for heart transplant surgery.

Image source by Bivacor