The history of 1000 Hearts at The Alfred

Since then, the service has grown, and now cares for patients from Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia who have had, or are waiting to have, a heart or lung transplant.

As part of The Alfred’s Heart and Lung service, patients now have access to a full suite of complex, acute and general cardiac services from world leading clinicians, at their doorstep.

Over the years, The Alfred has driven innovations in heart transplant care:

• 1989: The Alfred’s Heart Lung Transplant Service commences, and becomes the busiest unit in Australia and South East Asia
• 1990: An Alfred team implants the first artificial heart pump in south east Asia and a Thoratec Ventricular Assist Device as a bridge to heart transplantation and the first transcontinental heart retrieval from Perth
• 1990: A patient is flown from Perth to Melbourne for transplantation in a specially-pressurised RAAF Hercules plane. This heralds the unit's first successful retrieval and later, transplantation of a critically ill patient from across the country
• 1991: An Alfred team visits another hospital to insert Extracorporeal Oxygenator (ECMO) into a patient who is then brought back to The Alfred for transplantation
• 2005: The Alfred opens its Paediatric Lung Transplant Program
• 2021: ‘Hypothermic ex-vivo perfusion’ is trialled, potentially doubling the time a donor heart remains viable for transplantation
• 2024: The Total Artificial Heart is launched, one of three heart technologies being created under the Artificial Heart Frontiers Program, based at the Monash Alfred Baker Centre for Cardiovascular Research at The Alfred