Jarvik-7 Artificial Heart

Summary

The Jarvik-7 was a pneumatically driven artificial heart developed by Robert Jarvik under the direction of Willem Kolff at the University of Utah's Division of Artificial Organs. Before the Jarvik-7 implant, replacing the human heart with a machine was theoretical.

Impact

Before the Jarvik-7 implant, replacing the human heart with a machine was theoretical. The Clark operation made it real, and in doing so opened the clinical, regulatory, and engineering path for all subsequent mechanical circulatory support. Ventricular assist devices, the CardioWest Total Artificial Heart (a direct Jarvik-7 descendant), and today's bridge-to-transplant devices are all downstream from the work done in Salt Lake City.

The FDA's experience evaluating the Jarvik-7 trial also helped shape how implantable devices are regulated. Kolff's artificial organs program simultaneously advanced hemodialysis dialysis research; Salt Lake City became the world center of artificial-organ research for decades, a role that seeded the broader Utah medical-device ecosystem.

What It Took

A pneumatically driven artificial heart built from polyurethane and aluminum, sized to fit inside a human chest cavity, and connected to an external air compressor via percutaneous pneumatic lines. The device had two ventricles that alternately inflated and deflated to pump blood through the pulmonary and systemic circulation. Barney Clark's heart was removed; the Jarvik-7 took its place entirely.

The harder engineering problem was not making the pump move but making it move without killing the patient: avoiding hemolysis, managing clotting, surviving infection risk, tolerating indefinite mechanical cycling, and using materials that tissue and blood would not reject over months.

Utah Context

The Jarvik-7 is the canonical example of Utah's artificial-organ tradition. Kolff brought his vision and expertise to the University of Utah from the Netherlands and Cleveland, and built a sustained research program that attracted engineers, physicians, and students who went on to found or lead medical-device companies across the region. The Jarvik-7 is why Salt Lake City had a serious biomedical engineering culture before the broader Utah tech ecosystem formed. The University of Utah's James LeVoy Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation sits inside this lineage.

Evidence

• DeVries, Anderson, Joyce, Anderson, Hammond, Jarvik, and Kolff, "Clinical Use of the Total Artificial Heart", NEJM 310(5):273–278 (1984) · https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM198402023100501 — the Utah team's own peer-reviewed clinical report of the Clark implant; DeVries, Jarvik, and Kolff are co-authors.
• University of Utah: The First Total Artificial Heart · https://medicine.utah.edu/sites/g/files/zrelqx356/files/migration/media/first-artificial-heart-anderson.pdf — primary institutional account of Kolff, Jarvik, DeVries, and Clark. — source record
• Smithsonian: Jarvik Presents Artificial Hearts to National Museum of American History · https://americanhistory.si.edu/press/releases/dr-jarvik-presents-artificial-hearts-smithsonians-national-museum-american-history — Smithsonian collection confirmation. — source record
• SynCardia Total Artificial Heart · https://syncardia.com — the direct clinical descendant, FDA-approved as bridge to transplant.
• Renée C. Fox and Judith P. Swazey, Spare Parts: Organ Replacement in American Society (1992) — definitive sociological and ethical account.

Open Questions

• The external drive unit was never practical for long-term quality of life; the ethics and framing of the Clark trial remain a live bioethics case study.
• A fuller account of the animal-experiment program that preceded Clark would strengthen the evidence base.
• What primary records establish the Jarvik-7's direct relationship to the modern SynCardia device and the regulatory framework it helped establish?