page_title: Jack Copeland (surgeon)
section_title: The first bridge-to-transplant with a total artificial heart
hierarchical_section_title: Jack Copeland (surgeon) / Early career / The first bridge-to-transplant with a total artificial heart
caption_attribution_description: Artificial heart: JARVIK-7 Heart, provided to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) by the University of Utah.
context_page_description: Jack Greene Copeland is an American cardiothoracic surgeon, who has established procedures in heart transplantation including repeat heart transplantation, the implantation of total artificial hearts to bridge the time to heart transplant, innovations in left ventricular assist devices and the technique of "piggybacking" a second heart in a person, while leaving them the original.
  In 1985, he performed the first successful implant of the Jarvik 7 artificial heart for the purpose of gaining time until a suitable heart donor could be found. The 25-year-old recipient received the heart transplant within two weeks of the implant and survived more than five years.
  Copeland co-founded SynCardia Systems and after being head of the cardiothoracic surgery programme at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson for over thirty years, he moved to the University of California, San Diego in 2010.
  He was one of the first presidents of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation, a society he helped co-found and who awarded him its Past Pioneer Award in 2013.
context_section_description: In 1985, Copeland and Mark Levinson with help from biomedical engineer Richard Smith, performed the first successful implant of the Jarvik 7 total artificial heart, the early version of the SynCardia TAH, in 25-year-old grocery store clerk Michael Drummond who was suffering with severe heart failure due to cardiomyopathy and was awaiting a heart transplant. It was the first time this procedure was performed successfully as a temporary measure to buy time until a matching donor heart could be found. The previous TAH implants were temporary by Cooley (1969 and 1981) and Copeland (1985) had failed to result in survival for more than days and several were "permanent" TAH implants by William DeVries (Barney Clark in December 1982) that resulted in short term survival.
  Prior to the first success, in March 1985, Copeland and his team had emergently implanted the unapproved Phoenix total artificial heart in a critically ill young man.  The FDA policy of making exceptions for unapproved devices use in true emergencies followed this case. The Michael Drummond case followed in August 1985. Worsening of Drummond's condition created a desperation for action and the decision to use a TAH. It allowed time to find a matching donor heart. He survived more than five years, having received his heart transplant within two weeks of the implant. His cause of death was lymphoma.
  Copeland, along with Don B. Olsen, was instrumental in forming CardioWest Technologies and continuing the research and development of TAH technology and its role in bridging-to-heart transplant. Following FDA approval to trial the CardioWest TAH, he published his ten-year trial (1993–2002), assessing the performance of the TAH in just less than 100 people with class IV biventricular heart failure and at risk of imminent death. All included in the trial were eligible for transplant but were waiting for donors. The trial demonstrated better clinical outcomes when the TAH was used to bridge-to-transplant. In 2001, he co-founded SynCardia Systems which acquired CardioWest Technologies. In 2004, the SynCardia heart was granted FDA approval for use as a bridge-to-transplant.  It is the only TAH to obtain FDA approval and be commercially available.
caption: JARVIK 7 TAH, used in 1985 as a bridge-to-transplant
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