Barney Clark received the first permanent artificial heart
On this day · 2 December 1982
A dying dentist volunteered to live tethered to a machine so doctors could learn whether a mechanical heart could keep a person alive.
On December 2, 1982, at the University of Utah, surgeon William DeVries implanted the first permanent total artificial heart into Barney Clark, a 61-year-old dentist whose own heart was failing from cardiomyopathy. The device, the polyurethane-and-aluminum Jarvik-7, replaced his heart entirely.
It was not a discreet implant. The Jarvik-7 was driven by compressed air pumped through tubes from a large external compressor that Clark could never leave behind.
He knew he might not survive long, but hoped what doctors learned would help others.
Clark lived 112 days, beset by complications, before dying in March 1983. The experiment was ethically fraught and physically grueling, yet it proved a human could survive on a purely mechanical heart. The work fed directly into later devices that now bridge patients toward transplant.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
