This Jarvik-7 total artificial heart was used in the first authorized bridge to organ transplant operation. A bridge to transplantation is a temporary measure that replacs a failing heart with a mechanical pump while waiting for a human heart for implantation. Jack G. Copeland, M.D, performed the surgery on August 29, 1985 at the University Medical Center, University of Arizona. The patient, 25 year old Michael Drummond, lived with the mechanical pump for nine days until a donor heart could be implanted. Later, Drummond kept the heart in his home before its donation to the Smithsonian.

Robert Jarvik (b. 1946) graduated from Syracuse University and earned a master’s degree in medical engineering from New York University. Then, at to the University of Utah Medical School, he earned an MD and was influenced by Wilhelm Johan Kolff, a Dutch-born physician who had developed a dialysis machine and was working on artificial organs. The first Jarvik-7 artificial heart was implanted in Barney Clark in 1982.

*Historical information courtesy of The Smithsonian

We acquired this object from a thoracic surgeons personal collection