In short:
A mechanical heart has been implanted in a New South Wales man who was experiencing severe heart failure.
He has become the first person in the world to be discharged from hospital with the titanium heart.
What's next?
Doctors say the invention will likely be an alternative for donor heart transplants in the future.
Australia's first durable artificial heart implant has been hailed a success after the recipient became the world's first person to be discharged from hospital with the high-tech device.
During a 6-hour operation in Sydney last November, doctors implanted the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart, a mechanical blood pump made out of titanium, into a man who was experiencing severe heart failure.
The man received the implant as a stop-gap until a donated heart became available, but BiVACOR is designed to one day be a permanent replacement for a failing heart.
Doctors hope it could eventually negate the need for human heart donors entirely.
The artificial heart uses magnetic technology to "whoosh" the blood around the body instead of pumping it. (Supplied: BiVACOR)
Renowned cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon Paul Jansz performed the operation at St Vincent's Hospital and said it gave him "goosebumps".
"There were definitely nerves, especially when Daniel [Timms, who invented BiVACOR] flicked the switch and turned it [the artificial heart] on," Dr Jansz said.
He described the invention as "the Holy Grail", as it technically cannot fail or be rejected by the body.
How Bunnings trips led to titanium heart invention
The implant pumps blood around the body using a motor with a special mechanism that avoids any mechanical wear between its parts. It uses magnets to suspend the motor's rotor, which means the parts don't rub or wear over time.
The device was designed by Queensland-born inventor Daniel Timms, who has dedicated his life to its creation.Â
Dr Timms said his interest in the idea was first sparked during childhood when he used to spend countless hours with his plumber father, tinkering with water pumps.
Daniel Timms's artificial heart differs to others that have come before which generally don't last longer than a few years. (Image: Australian of the Year Awards)
He said developing his invention involved many, many trips to Bunnings, which he visited with his dad every weekend.
"We had a goal between us — can we get the largest receipt at Bunnings?" he said. "We were trying to buy as much as we could to progress this along."
Dr Timms's father later died from heart failure, which only intensified his passion to complete the artificial heart.
He has always been determined to make sure Australians benefited from it early on.
"There's a lot of inventions in Australia and sometimes we feel they get lost overseas," he said.
Australian heart invention being trialled in the US
Dr Timms said he was grateful to the patient, a man in his 40s from New South Wales, who volunteered to receive the implant while waiting for a transplant.
The man lived with the artificial heart for more than 100 days until a human heart match was found last week. His transplant surgery was also a success, and he is recovering well.
The patient was seriously unwell before receiving the BiVACOR heart.
He had trouble even walking to the toilet so was not expected to survive long enough to get a donor heart.
"A quarter of the people waiting for a transplant [used to] die — that's changed now with devices like this,"
Dr Jansz said.
Daniel Timms was inspired to create the device after his father died from heart failure. (Supplied: BiVACOR)
Dr Timms said he expects in two to three years his artificial heart will be less of a novelty and will be implanted in more and more people.
"We just need to make more devices, that's the only limitation right now … we are ramping up manufacturing so they are sitting on the shelf ready and waiting."
Four more devices are due to be implanted this year through the Monash University led Artificial Heart Frontiers Program.
The BiVACOR was first implanted in a patient in July 2024 at the Texas Heart Institute, but that patient was never discharged from hospital. Since then four other patients in the US have received them before being matched with donors, but they were never discharged with the implant.
Small but powerful
The device is small enough to fit inside a 12-year-old and weighs about 650 grams, but doctors say patients cannot feel it inside them.
It is powered by an external rechargeable battery that connects to the heart via a wire in the patient's chest.
The battery lasts four hours and then alerts the patient that a new battery is needed. The hope is that in the future, the patient won't need to carry around a battery — and could even place a wireless charger over their chest, similar to how a mobile phone can be charged wirelessly.
Dr Jansz said it was fitting that this historic implant was performed at the same place where Australia's first-ever heart transplant took place in 1968. Australia's first successful heart transplant also took place at St Vincent's Hospital, performed by Victor Chang in 1984.
Doctors at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne are undergoing training and hope to perform their first BiVACOR implantation around mid-2025.
Heart failure kills about 5,000 Australians each year and occurs when the heart becomes less effective at pumping blood around the body. It can come on suddenly but usually develops slowly as the heart becomes weaker.
St Vincent's Hospital Sydney cardiologist Chris Hayward said the BiVACOR artificial heart would become the alternative for patients who cannot wait for a donor heart, or when a donor heart is simply not available.
Australia is in desperate need of more organ donors with a 5 per cent decrease in the total number of transplant recipients last year, while heart transplants were down by 19 per cent.
Want to register to be an organ donor? https://www.donatelife.gov.au/register-donor-today