The first artificial heart to serve as a permanent replacement for a human heart was the Jarvik-7, invented by Robert K. Jarvik in 1977 and implanted by surgeon William de Vries in the body of 61-year-old dentist Barney Clarke in 1982.Heart surgery progressed very quickly after the first human heart transplant in 1967, and Robert Jarvik (USA) knew that he was not alone in thinking that it might be possible to replace a defective human heart with an artificial one - his US patent (filed 1977, granted 1979) discussed much of the work that had already been done, which included more that 100 US patents relating to artificial hear pumps. Despite all this prior work, Jarvik can be described as the inventor of the artificial heart because he designed the first such pump to permanently replace a human heart.
When Jarvik was 18, his father underwent open-heart surgery, a traumatic event that prompted Jarvik to study medicine; he graduated from the university of Utah in 1976 with an MD. The following year he filed his patent for an artificial heart, and in 1982 surgeon William de Vries (USA), of the University of Utah Medical Center, implanted a Jarvik-7 in Barney Clarke (USA), who survived for 112 days. Jarvik's 1977 patent suggests that at that stage the artificial heart was intended as a temporary rather that a permanent replacement, but five years later, when it was implanted in Clarke, the Jarvik-7 was capable of being just that, with two separate pumps acting like the ventricles of the heart.
Although the Jarvik-7 had prolonged the lives of more that 70 patients by the end of the 1980s, there were problems, including an increased risk of blood clots, strokes, haemorrhaging and secondary infections. Jarvik continued researching to improve the heart, and at the turn of the millennium he was working on the Jarvik-2000, designed to be connected to a coin-sized controller screwed in to the skull behind the ear and powered by a battery pack worn on the belt. To date the longest surviving recipient of an artificial heart is William Schroeder (USA), who recieved a Jarvik-7 on 25 November 1984, implanted by William de Vries, and who survived a total of 620 days until 7 August 1986.
Source - The Book Of Inventions by Ian Harrison
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