An
artificial heart is a device that replaces the
heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to
heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in case heart transplantation is impossible. Although other similar inventions preceded it going back to the late 1940s, the first artificial heart to be successfully implanted in a human was the Jarvik-7 in 1982, designed by a team including
Willem Johan Kolff and
Robert Jarvik.