DURHAM, N.C. — There's new hope for the thousands of people waiting for a heart transplant.
Usually, those patients are too sick to go home and forced to spend months in an ICU, just waiting for the call. Now, a new, experimental high-tech artificial heart may be able to change that.
Doctors told Donavon Harbison his time was running out as he laid in a North Carolina hospital earlier this year.
What the 35-year-old teacher and father thought was pneumonia was actually severe heart failure. His every heartbeat was becoming more faint - his lungs were filling with fluid.
"It was scary," Harbison said. "Heart failure means death."
Doctors told him his only hope for survival was a heart transplant.
"He really needed all this support, and over the course of just a few weeks, had to be transitioned onto pumps that were not enough support for him," said Duke surgeon Adam DeVore.
There are more than 4,000 patients on the heart transplant list at any given time, with far fewer organs available. People can wait months, sometimes years for an available heart.
While waiting for a heart, doctors can offer temporary devices to manage the heart failure. But they can be large and cumbersome and don't work well for everyone.
Doctors at Duke turned to an experimental device - a titanium artificial heart powered by magnets made by BiVACOR - that would actually replace his heart.
Daniel Timms invented the device.
"Their natural heart will be removed, and then the device will be attached through these connections to the remnant parts of the heart inside here, and then these grafts are then stitched to the remaining vessels, both the aorta and the pulmonary artery," Timms said while demonstrating how it's used.
"In an instant, the device was able to recreate normal circulation, normal amounts of blood flow, normal pressures," said Duke surgeon Carmelo Milano.
A team of Duke surgeons, including Milano spent four hours implanting the device in August.
Video shows the first moment Harbison was able to stand up with his titanium heart, which he would live with temporarily.
"It was definitely heavier because you don't normally feel your heart," Harbison said.
Harbison was just the second person on the planet to receive one. It's led to a new lease on life for the former North Carolina Central football player and Graham resident.
"I'm like, 'OK, I am going to be Tony Stark,'" Harbison said. "I'm about to come out with a shiny piece in my chest that, you know just keeps me alive."
For Harbison, within days of getting the device, he was able to get healthy enough for a transplant. With his new heart, he'll get to watch his children grow, including his fourth baby on the way.
When asked if he felt the device saved his life, Harbison responded "yes, without a doubt."