Researchers' Quest for an Artificial Heart

The need to mend broken hearts has never been greater. In the USA alone, around 610,000 people die of heart disease each year. A significant number of those deaths could potentially have been prevented with a heart transplant but, unfortunately, there are simply too few hearts available. In 1967 the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant in Cape Town. It seemed like a starting gun had gone off; soon doctors all around the world were tra