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 lived for 100 days with an artificial titanium heart while he awaited a donor transplant, the longest period to date of someone with the technology.