Kevin K. Cheng (born around 1945), developed the Phoenix total artificial heart, first used in a human in 1985 in an emergency in a person whose donor heart was being acutely rejected. Cheng was a dentist by profession and the Phoenix heart he designed was originally developed to be implanted into a young cow. The recipient Thomas Creighton, who was dying from a failing heart, survived the artificial heart operation and 11 hours later a human heart was transplanted. The cause of death less than two days afterwards was not due to the artificial heart. Cheng had fled China with his family at the age of four, spent his childhood and completed his education in Taiwan and then settled in the United States. His past time of designing artificial hearts took him from Texas to Phoenix, where he developed artificial hearts for transplantation into cows.

Early life

Kevin K. Cheng fled China on a boat with his parents at the age of four. They settled in Taiwan, where he became skilled at drawing, building models and then engineering. He gained admission to study medicine at Kaohsiung Medical College, where dental students and medical students received the same initial education and later in 1973, he moved to

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, United States. After a few months he found a job as a research associate in the cardiovascular laboratory at the Texas Heart Institute and over the next 30 months he designed and built 36 artificial hearts that were implanted in calves. In 1978, Cheng decided to go to the University of Texas Dental School in Houston and subsequently moved to the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at Galveston to work with people with cancer. The whole time, he continued to build and redesign artificial hearts.

The Phoenix total artificial heart

Failing to gain support from the surgeons he spoke to and being unsuccessful in his application for a grant from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, he by chance met technician Jon Austin at St. Luke's Hospital,

Phoenix Phoenix most often refers to: * Phoenix (mythology), a legendary bird from ancient Greek folklore * Phoenix, Arizona, a city in the United States Phoenix may also refer to: Mythology Greek mythological figures * Phoenix (son of Amyntor), a ...

and feeling that there may be hope of progressing with his artificial hearts, Cheng moved to Phoenix and opened a general and reconstructive dental clinic. After being introduced to heart surgeon Cecil Vaughn and veterinarian Peter Bates in 1983, Cheng was given space in a laboratory to carry out experimental work. In 1984, Vaughn and Cheng implanted the first Phoenix artificial heart in a calf and subsequently performed another three such procedures, with the longest survival of more than 12 hours. The next planned artificial heart procedure in 1985, was however cancelled when Vaughn was called to an emergency. Then, on 6 March 1985, Cheng was informed that his artificial heart was needed in desperation by 33-year old Thomas Creighton, 120 miles away at the University of Arizona Medical Center. Creighton had been transplanted a human heart the previous day, by surgeon

Jack Copeland Brian John Copeland (born 1950) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and author of books on the computing pioneer Alan Turing. Education Copeland was educated at the University of Oxford, obta ...

, but the donor heart failed. Cheng, Vaughn and a technician transported the artificial heart via helicopter and chartered jet, from Phoenix airport to the University of Arizona hospital, Phoenix, where Copeland and his team awaited them. Copeland and Vaughn performed the operation and successfully connected the artificial heart in place, leaving the chest open as the Phoenix heart, originally designed to fit into a calf chest, was too big for the chest to be closed after surgery. Sterile wrapping was used to protect the area. Cheng later recounted the time following the procedure and when the Phoenix heart began beating; “Every minute was like a year...I prayed the whole time”. A few hours later, a blood leak from the anastomosis site needed interim surgery with a teflon cuff. 11 hours later, a human heart was used to replace the Phoenix heart. Cheng recalled that upon examination of the Phoenix heart, after its removal from Creighton's chest, showed no evidence of damage with blood clots. The whole episode became a topic of discussion with the

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. In 2006, Vaughn published a fictional book ''The Phoenix Heart'', based on the Phoenix artificial heart implantation of 1985, in which he quotes; "There once was a man who had four hearts in three days, and the only one that worked was artificial".

Selected publications

"Applications Of The Total Artificial Heart In Cardiovascular Research"
co-authored with Nagai I, Hongo T, Meador J, Akutsu T, ''Cardiovascular Disease'', 1976;3(4):408-423, .
"The Design And Fabrication Of A New Total Artificial Heart"
co-authored with James W. Meador, Miguel A. Serrato, and Tetsuzo Akutsu, ''Cardiovascular Disease'', 1977; 4(1): 7–17.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cheng, Kevin K. Living people Year of birth missing (living people) 1985 in medicine 1940s births