For decades, replacing a failing human heart meant waiting—often desperately—for a donor. But in a hospital in Sydney, that paradigm has begun to shift. Last November, surgeons at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney implanted the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart in a critically ill patient.

An Australian man has become the first person in the world to leave hospital with a total artificial heart implant. The patient lived with the device for more than 100 days before receiving a donor he