Peter Houghton, the world’s longest-surviving recipient of an artificial heart, died on November 25 at a hospital in his home city of Birmingham, England. He was 68. The cause of death was multiple organ failure, but physicians had to disconnect the battery on the artificial heart before he could be declared dead.

Houghton received the Jarvik 2000 artificial heart in June 2000, three years after he had suffered a massive heart attack caused by the viral flu. The pump was implanted by Dr Stephen Westaby at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford — the first time the pump developed by Dr Robert Jarvik had been tested in a human.

Westaby said the other six patients in whom the pump had been implanted had not survived nearly as long as Houghton.

The Jarvik pump is designed to support the body’s blood circulation until a donor heart becomes available for a transplant, but Houghton’s age and medical condition ruled him out as a transplant recipient.

At the time of the surgery, his heart had deteriorated until it had only 10 per cent of normal function, he was barely able to walk and doctors gave him only a few weeks to live.

Two weeks after the surgery, he went for a two-mile walk.

He was active in charity work during the seven extra years of life he received, participating in a 90-mile charity walk, hiking the Alps, traveling to support heart research, writing two books and raising millions of dollars for other victims of heart attacks.

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