After FDA approval in 1982, a panel of six members at the University of Utah Medical Center began reviewing heart patients. After many experiments implanting the mechanism into animals, DeVries began the long and hard process of getting the permission required by the FDA to implant the heart into a human patient. Its pumping action came from compressed air from an electrical unit located outside the patient's body. The Jarvik-7 replaced the ventricles of the human heart. When DeVries rejoined the team, he began to use Dr. DeVries left Utah to do his internship and residency in cardiovascular surgery at Duke University, but returned to Kolff 's team in 1979. You're hired!' In his work for Kolff, DeVries performed experimental surgery on the first animal recipients of the artificial heart. When DeVries introduced himself, Kolff replied, 'That's a good Dutch name. Drawn to Kolff's work, DeVries asked him for a position on his research team. Willem Kolff, a pioneer of biomedical engineering. During his first year in medical school at the University of Utah College of Medicine, he attended a lecture by Dutch-born Dr. The young DeVries had an early mechanical bent and excelled in sports and his studies. His widowed mother remarried and brought him up in Ogden, Utah. William DeVries was the son of a physician and a nurse. DeVries was the only surgeon authorized by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to implant an artificial heart into a human. William DeVries and his surgical team at the University of Utah Medical Center made medical history and national headlines on 2 December 1982, when they replaced the diseased heart of Barney Clark with the Jarvik-7, the first permanent artificial heart ever used for a human patient. William DeVries (born 1943) performed the first artificial heart transplant on a human patient.ĭr.

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