Innovation

The Victor Chang Foundation grants funds to support INNOVATION in cardiac surgery.

As a surgeon, Victor Chang strived to be innovative in his profession and continually improve upon techniques used in cardiovascular surgery and the management of heart disease.

Dr Chang liked to know how things worked, what made them tick, and he liked solving problems, the harder and more challenging, the better. The need to use his hands was translated through surgery and he used his mind to invent and save as many lives as possible.

This is one of the key reasons Dr Chang decided to create the Victor Chang Foundation and include INNOVATION as one of its two key missions. 

The artificial heart and the St Vincent’s valve are two examples of Dr Chang’s innovative work.

Artificial Valve

Through sheer determination Dr Chang wanted to fulfil one of his dreams, to provide affordable heart valves throughout Asia. Key people were recruited, including a tissue valve designer, a mechanical valve designer and a marketer. It was a big leap of faith for Dr Chang’s team and for the funders involved in this joint venture between Australia and a partner in China. Operating costs were so large that the development of the project was moved to Singapore for manufacturing. 

An existing team member describes Dr Chang as "the driving force behind every aspect of the project; medical advisor, cheerleader and sometimes, ringmaster. All of us remain in awe of his ability to pull all this together and make this project happen."  

Dr Chang requested it be named the St Vincent’s Tissue Valve and the St Vincent’s Mechanical Valve.

Artificial Heart

Before his death Dr Chang had been developing his long-held dream,  the creation of a low-cost artificial heart. The artificial heart (TAH – Total Artificial Heart) would be an Australian invention, but it would also suit patients in China and the developing world who couldn’t afford Western donor heart transplant technology.

Concerned about a shortage of organ donors, he secured funding to create a team of scientists and engineers from around the world to develop an artificial heart. His team made significant progress designing an artificial heart named CHAD (Chang Heart Assist Device).

Essentially, an artificial heart is a blood pump. Dr Chang saw it as a standard piece of surgical equipment that should, one day, be available in all cardiac units. It could also be used for transplant patients while they waited for a suitable donor heart.

The TAH is intended for patients with imminent heart failure who are awaiting heart transplantation. It also has a temporary function for those with hearts that need time to recover their pumping power. The TAH can either be implanted in a patient’s body, or used externally.