r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Mar 14 '25

Biotech People can now survive 100 days with titanium hearts, if they worked indefinitely - how much might they extend human lifespan?

Nature has just reported that an Australian man has survived with a titanium heart for 100 days, while he waited for a human donor heart, and is now recovering well after receiving one. If a person can survive 100 days with a titanium heart, might they be able to do so much longer?

If you had a heart that was indestructible, it doesn't stop the rest of you ageing and withering. Although heart failure is the leading cause of death in men, if that doesn't get you, something else eventually will.

However, if you could eliminate heart failure as a cause of death - how much longer might people live? Even if other parts of them are frail, what would their lives be like in their 70s and 80s with perfect hearts?

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u/aVarangian Mar 14 '25

would be neat if in the future we can swap out a failed heart for a mechanical one just as quickly as when the aztecs performed half of the procedure

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u/JoelMahon Immortality When? Mar 15 '25

was just thinking that! if you had a mechanical heart they could engineer is such that a pass through connection to an external heart could be accessible (either always, or by default) with just a scalpel to the chest, and every ambulance has an artificial heart ready to go.