The BiVACOR, pictured, is a total heart replacement made of titanium.Credit: Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty
An Australian man in his forties has become the first person in the world to leave hospital with an artificial heart made of titanium. The device is used as a stopgap for people with heart failure who are waiting for a donor heart, and previous recipients of this type of artificial heart had remained in US hospitals while it was in place.
The man lived with the device for more than three months until he underwent surgery to receive a donated human heart. The man is recovering well, according to a statement from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia, where the operations were conducted.
The Australian is the sixth person globally to receive the device, known as BiVACOR, but the first to live with it for more than a month.
“This is certainly an important development in the field,” says Julian Smith, a cardiac surgeon at the Victorian Heart Institute at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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