Dr Chang honoured by Laa Yulta Primary School

We are excited to announce that the newly opened Laa Yulta Primary School (in Mambourin, Victoria) has named one of its four houses after Dr Victor Chang. The Chang House symbolises excellence. https://www.schoolbuildings.vic.gov.au/Laa-Yulta-Primary-School

Credit to artist Mietta Howes from Nuttshell Graphics for the wonderful illustration of Dr Chang. Nuttshell.com.au

BiVACOR’s Total Artificial Heart is successfully implanted

BiVACOR’s TOTAL ARTIFICIAL HEART has successfully been implanted into the first human. Biomedical engineer, Dr Daniel Timms’ Australian-designed device was implanted on July 9, 2024. The Victor Chang Foundation extends a huge congratulations to Daniel Timms and his team at BiVACOR. An incredible step forward in the field of cardiothoracic surgery. One that Dr Chang would be proud of. 

Click here to learn more about how this BiVACOR artificial heart works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAajHSmplpA

VCF Board welcomes award winning journalist Amanda Hooton

The Victor Chang Foundation is delighted to welcome Amanda Hooton to its Board of Directors.

Amanda Hooton is a talented journalist with over 25 years’ experience in the Australian and international media.

Her prestigious career includes winning several awards such as the Walkley, Kennedy, Scottish and British Press and RANZCOG Media awards. Amanda has a special interest in medical stories, including those involving heart transplant, cardiac devices and total artificial hearts. She is an invaluable addition to the VCF board of directors.

Marking 40 years since Fiona Coote received her first heart transplant

Watch this video marking 40 years since Fiona received her new heart.

On 8th April, 1984. Dr Chang and his team operated on Fiona Coote, giving her a new heart.

Fiona was 14 years old at the time of the procedure and was the fourth ever recipient of a heart transplant in Australia. Fiona is a Patron of the Victor Chang Foundation.

Fiona said:

When Dr Chang first assessed me to see if I would be suitable for a heart transplant, they said ‘No’. Here I was, with all my organs in failure and on total life-support, punctured lungs and far from a good chance at survival. I’m indeed blessed that the St Vincent’s transplant team reconsidered, said ‘Yes’.

Shortly after my transplant I was lying in my critical care bed, floating in and out of the anaesthetic haze. I was ventilated and therefore unable to speak. I could hear voices calling my name and when I came to, there were five people all peering down at me. The leader was particularly inquisitive, and I later knew him as Dr Chang.

Long-term artificial heart developed by Daniel Timms and his team at BiVACOR

The Victor Chang Foundation would like to congratulate Australian engineer, Daniel Timms, and his team from his company, BiVACOR, on securing AUD$50 million from the Australian government in order to continue development of the world’s first long-term artificial heart. It is expected to be tested in USA then Australia as early as 2025. One person dies from heart failure every three hours in Australia –but there are only thousands of heart transplants available worldwide. The titanium device weighs about 600 grams, but doesn’t look like any heart found in a human… it is smaller than other artificial hearts tried before – it can fit inside the chest of a child – and for the first time, it’s both long-lasting and responsive. Dr Chang was working on his fifth prototype of an artificial heart just before he died in 1991.

Dr Victor Chang honoured in Washington’s Australian Embassy

On October 24th 2023, the Embassy of Australia in Washington was opened by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The Embassy honoured Dr Victor Chang by naming a room after him in the new chancery, acknowledging that Dr Chang was a person who “significantly shaped Australia, blazed a trail for others, and elevated Australia’s relations with the United States.

The work of Dr Victor Chang, whose medical education included training at the Mayo Clinic in the US, benefited not only Australia, but the wider Indo-Pacific region.”

Google’s tribute to Dr Victor Chang

Google pays tribute to Dr Victor Chang

On the 21 November 1936 Dr. Chang was born in Shanghai. To celebrate what would have been Dr Chang’s 87th birthday, Google paid tribute to his life with one of its famous “Google Doodles”.

Google said:

Today’s Doodle celebrates Chinese Australian doctor Victor Chang, who was a pioneer in modern heart transplant surgery.

One of his most impactful contributions to medicine was the development of St. Vincent's artificial heart valve. It was significantly cheaper than previous models, making it globally accessible for use in lifesaving procedures.

As a testament to how impactful his medical advancements were, Dr. Chang was voted Australian of the Century at the People’s Choice Awards in 1999 and received Australia’s highest honour in 1986: the Companion of the Order of Australia.

Dr. Chang was passionate about sharing knowledge and skills to improve global healthcare. He created the Victor Chang Foundation in 1984. The Foundation awards grants to educate Southeast Asian surgeons in order to bring them to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney to be trained in advanced cardiac surgery, particularly heart transplantation. Grants are also given to programs that explore innovation in cardiac surgery.

Thank you for your extraordinary work and for giving others the gift of life, Dr. Victor Chang.

Professor John Kelly AM appointed to VCF Board

The Victor Chang Foundation is proud to welcome Professor John Kelly AM to its Board of Directors.

Prof. Kelly started his career as a cardiac nurse and from 2016-2021 was CEO at the Heart Foundation of Australia. His extensive career in cardiac health makes him a wonderful addition to the Victor Chang Foundation Board and we are very excited to continue Dr Chang’s work with him.

Dr Wenjian Jiang tells us about his VCF Fellowship experience

Hello everyone, this is Wenjian Jiang, cardiac surgeon from Beijing Anzhen Hospital [in China]. In 2019 the Victor Chang Foundation was able to grant funds to bring me to Australia and train under Dr Paul Jansz at St Vincent’s Hospital [Sydney] for two years. 

Actually, I had been greatly inspired by Dr Victor Chang, a legendary cardiac surgeon, and so it was my great honour to be awarded as the inaugural Victor Chang Foundation Surgical Fellowship. 

Frankly speaking it was a great turn in the course of my professional life. Before that, I was an aortic surgeon and I had no experience about heart transplantation and little about valve surgeries.

During the two-year training at St Vincent's Hospital I helped more that 70 cases of heart transplantations, 30 cases of retrievals and 500 cases of other cardiothoracic surgeries.

This experience is very important for me to [take back] to China and now I’m working at Beijing Anzhen Hospital as a consultant and professor of the heart valve surgery centre and the heart transplantation centre.

I want to thank the Victor Chang Foundation, St Vincent’s Hospital and Dr Paul Jansz for their training and I hope all the future trainees could realise their dreams [with] the help of the Victor Chang Foundation.

Thank you.

大家好，我是北京安贞医院心脏外科医生姜文建。 2019 年，Victor Chang 基金会能够拨款将我带到澳大利亚，并在圣文森特医院跟随 Paul Jansz 医生接受为期两年的培训。 

事实上，传奇的心脏外科医生 Victor Chang 医生给了我很大的启发，因此我很荣幸获得首届 Victor Chang 基金会外科奖学金。

坦率地说，这是我职业生涯中的一次重大转折。在那之前，我是一名主动脉外科医生，对心脏移植没有任何经验，对瓣膜手术也知之甚少。

在圣文森特医院的两年培训期间，我帮助了 70 多例心脏植入手术、30 多例取出手术和 500 多例其他心胸外科手术。

这段经历对我[带回]中国非常重要，现在我在北京安贞医院担任心脏瓣膜手术中心和心脏移植中心的顾问和教授。

我要感谢张中山基金会、圣文森特医院和Paul Jansz博士的培训，我希望所有未来的学员都能在张中山基金会的帮助下实现他们的梦想。

谢谢。

Dr Victor Chang – The Australian Magazine

A wonderful article from The Australia Magazine on Dr Victor Chang. This was at a time when Dr Chang was leading an international team towards a development of an artificial heart. The aim was that patients could survive on the artificial heart (or ‘Artheart’) until a heart transplant was available.

View the full article here, or read the text below:

THE PATIENT IS LYING ON his back, eyes closed, the life-giving machines blinking and humming in the bright light. Wires taped to his chest pick up a racing heartbeat, yet the heart is no longer sustaining life. Its job is being done by a small, cone-shaped device strapped to his stomach.

It is an artificial heart, pumping life at 80 beats a minute.

Within days, the man will sit up, eat, talk — and watch his own blood flow from the plastic heart, through the tubing and into his body, bypassing his own useless heart, still beating in its place but redundant.

This is not fantasy. Before long, it will become a typical hospital scene, following the successful construction of an artificial heart by Dr Victor Chang and his team of researchers at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney. Dr Chang, the pioneer of Australia’s successful heart transplant program, sees the heart becoming a standard piece of equipment in cardiac surgical units.

After three years’ research and five prototypes, Dr Chang believes his heart is the most economical (he dislikes the word “cheap”) and the best in the world.

Working with a small Australian engineering company, and one of the best medical brains in China — the surgeon who designed and built China’s heart-lung machine — Dr Chang's team solved problems insurmountable to others, and has successfully completed a series of animal experiments with their heart.

The Australian heart differs from its predecessors, the best-known being the US-built Jarvik-7, which sits inside the chest and replaces the natural heart. The Australian heart sits outside the body and does part or all of the work of the natural heart, but does not physically replace it.

The Australian heart will enable patients to survive for a limited period, possibly for months, while they await a heart transplant (almost 20 per cent of people on the waiting list die before their turn comes). Or it can be used to allow the natural heart to recover after being “stunned” by severe injury to the heart muscle due to inflammation or heart attack, and following cardiac surgery when the patient’s heart muscle temporarily fails to work even though the operation was successful.

Dr Chang's ambitious project has its roots in one of his frequent visits to China. There, in 1977, he saw many people with rheumatic valvular heart disease who would die because they could not afford a heart valve made in America or in Europe. “There are many poor countries and poor people who cannot afford to have the operation,” he says. “I decided then that I would one day create a valve that was affordable.”

Back at St Vincent's Hospital, he assembled a team of international experts, who, through a series of painstaking experiments with different materials, developed the valve….. — “one of my brainchilds”, Dr Chang says — which costs $600, compared to $3500 for an imported valve. The affordable valve was a critical turning point. He then saw the possibility of an artificial heart, using the “St Vincent's valve”, that would be affordable — even for underdeveloped countries.

The valve, manufactured both in Sydney and China, is now doing big business worldwide.

The problem with previous artificial hearts was not the surgical techniques of connecting them, which Dr Chang says require only moderate skill. Instead, it was understanding fluid dynamics and obtaining the right materials.

Previous external hearts such as Dr Chang's — known as ventricular assist devices, or VADs — were built with a parallel inlet and the outlet for blood flow, like a double-barrelled shotgun.

The parallel openings create turbulence inside the heart, leaving some parts static while others flow quickly. Blood can easily clot in these static regions and should the clots break off, they can travel to the brain and cause a stroke, or damage other organs.

“In ours,” Dr Chang explains, “the inlet and outlet are not parallel. The blood comes in and spirals before going out. When you pull the plug out of a basin you get the same effect. Water will twirl around before going out — that’s the most efficient egress of fluid. Flow-visualisation tests using high-speed cinematography have confirmed that in this heart, blood flows smoothly and quickly with no areas of stasis. Without clots you won't get strokes. Simple.”

The development of the heart, expected to be in use in 18 months, has so far cost more than $500,000, with no government support. The initial donation came from two grateful Asian patients, and it built up with donations from other “grateful people”, all of whom want to remain anonymous.

But, according to the research team’s co-ordinator, Kay Pittelkow, that money is no longer enough. “We can’t manufacture bio-medical devices as a backyard operation anymore. The laboratory is a converted bathroom. My office is five storeys away in a different building, making organisation and co-ordination very difficult. We need help.”

Dr Chang and Ms Pittelkow work with the Chinese surgeon, Professor Chun-Xiu Ye, Canadian biomedical engineer Allen Nugent, Japanese biomedical engineer Takao Nakamura (who recently replaced Associate Professor Mitsuo Umezu, who was lured back to Japan) and clinical nurse co-ordinator Sister Fiona Aitchison.

Their first task was to get the internal shape of the heart right. They built plaster models of what they thought it should be — a cone with the outlet at the top and the inlet at an angle to the base — then played around with it, building rough plastic moulds. Sometimes they used just a block of resin and hollowed out a heart shape.

They made dyes and pumped them through the hearts, checking the flow of fluid and remodelling the hearts until they got it right. All the information was then fed into a computer, which fine-tuned their model.

A further step was to coat the inner surface of the working model with a graphite/silicon mixture, then pump fluid through. Watching the graphite wash off the surface allowed them to see if there would be any areas of stasis near the walls of the heart, which would allow clots to form.

The third main step was to test this device with blood. The team found that their heart damaged the blood only half as much as existing hearts.

In most cases, each patient will require two artificial hearts. The natural heart is really two separate systems: the right side pushes blood through the lungs to pick up oxygen and the left side pumps it through the body, delivering that dissolved gas to the tissues.

With the St Vincent's artificial heart, two plastic tubes attached to it are grafted to the arteries and veins near the natural, but failing heart. Blood returning along the major veins from the limbs is diverted into a tube which carries it outside the body to the artificial heart. The heart pumps it back up another tube into the lungs. where it picks up oxygen. On its way from the lungs to the left side of the natural heart. it is diverted down a tube to the second artificial heart where it is again pumped. this time at a greater pressure, back into the aorta for its trip through the body tissues.

The driving force for the artificial hearts comes from two large metal boxes beside the bed. Each is attached to the base of the artificial heart by a tube through which the compressor forces air into the heart and then sucks it out, creating a vacuum.

A flexible diaphragm, made of segmented polyurethane, separates the air and blood compartments. Because the casing of the heart is rigid, when air is forced in, the diaphragm moves up, pumping blood out. When a vacuum is created the diaphragm moves down, drawing blood in. One-way valves on the inlet and outlet prevent blood going the wrong way.

The heart and tubing are made of a special plastic which has been used before and is known to be safe.

A material was needed to coat the inside of the heart which would prevent blood clotting. They found the answer in Japan — new chemicals called TM3 and TMS5 were made available to Chang only because of the Japanese researchers in the team.

Dr Chang's team worked with designers, manufacturers and suppliers from the start, with the cost of materials and production paramount. Talon Technology, a small design and engineer business in Sydney, has been moulding the heart. One difficulty faced in other hearts was to get a strong, smooth material that was clear so it could be seen if blood clots were forming or the diaphragm had a tear. Talon did what nobody else in the world had done. It incorporated carbon fibre inserts into the areas of stress, giving the team an unbreakable but transparent heart.

An example of the way the team kept the costs down was in making the dies for the manufacturing diaphragms. “Instead of designing custom and expensive dies, we’ve used ashtray technology” Pittelkow says. “Talon made five quality dies very cheaply using the technologies they use in making ashtrays.”

She says the project has quickly compared to other research projects. “We've been lucky amount of talent and skill working together. For example Professor Ye, who actually developed a heart-lung machine in China, could still be working as a brilliant surgeon and saving lots of lives with his hands, but he says that if this heart succeeded, then he would save far more lives with his head.

“The main thing to think of is that with this, people can walk away healthy. People think that high technology medicine is only about delaying death, but with this heart we're talking about getting people back to full health.”

Artificial hearts have a long history, even longer than heart transplants.

In 1966, Texan surgeon Michael DeBakey put an artificial heart into the chest of a 65-year-old coal miner, Marcel DeRudder, hoping to give his diseased heart time to heal. He lived for five days.

Mechanical hearts were soon overwhelmed by the fervour for heart transplantation and the enormous technical difficulties researchers faced. They resurfaced in the United States in 1983 when the Jarvik-7 was implanted into 61-year-old dentist Barney Clark. He barely outlived the media attention, hooked up to machines in hospital for 111 days before succumbing to repeated strokes and infections.

It was fairly widely accepted that artificial hearts damaged the blood by pounding it as it went through valves and by the contact with non-human material. But one desperate doctor involved in the operation rejected this conventional wisdom. “Barney’s heart was still going strong. It was the rest of his organs which failed,” he said, blaming Clark’s recalcitrant liver and kidneys. Last year, US health authorities ordered the Jarvik-7 off the market in the US because of “poor quality control”.

But not all the complications have been medical. In the mid-eighties, a Swedish businessman, Leif Stenberg, had an artificial heart beating inside his chest when he was charged with tax evasion. His lawyers argued their client could not be. charged because he was dead. Although they had the letter of the law on their side — under Swedish law, Stenberg died when his heart stopped beating — the judge found the presence of a talking corpse negated the argument. In effect, they were told to bury him or pay up. He paid, but died soon after when the heart failed.

Surgeons at St Vincent's in Sydney and the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne have occasionally used American hearts to keep people alive briefly, but none has been totally satisfactory, due to the damage they cause to the blood and the inevitable clotting.

These US-produced artificial heart systems — the air compressor, tubing, heart and accessories — cost about $500,000. The heart alone costs $30,000 to $45,000. The cost is related to the complexity in manufacturing. “Virtually everything is hand-made,” Dr Chang says. “It’s not like a mould stamping them out left, right and centre — you can’t do that. It’s all custom made.”

The St Vincent's valve is also handmade. It is now being manufactured in China, for use there, as well as in Sydney and is exported throughout Asia. Dr Chang's breakthrough in developing the valve revolved around the material used. The American valves use an expensive substance called carbonpyrroline, which is as hard as diamonds but not as fragile.

Dr Chang says that in opening and closing, carbonpyrroline valves crush a Jot of blood cells. This is known as the waterhammer effect, and leads to problems with anaemia and the deleterious effects of having chemical compounds normally held inside blood cells floating freely in the plasma.

“We went back to the initial material used, a sort of plastic called delrin,” Dr Chang says. “Delrin is much lighter, requires much less energy to move it, and the waterhammer effect is very much less because it's softer. You might say it doesn’t last as long, and that’s true. On the test bench it lasts 75 years, where the carbon can last up to 200 years. But who needs something for 75 years?”

The other great advantage of delrin is its price. The carbonpyrroline in an imported valve costs about $400, whereas just a dollar's worth of delrin will produce one St Vincent's valve. “Our valve costs $450 to the end user,” Dr Chang says. “For the other valve, the end user pays $3500. That's a big difference.”

He believes that using the “affordable” St Vincent's valve, and with improvements in manufacturing techniques, the team can produce a heart for about $4000 to $5000. He hopes to have an Australian “heart driver” made for about $25,000, but, in the meantime, he will use what is available.

“Potentially, there’s a lot of money in it,” he admits. “1 would like to see any profits go back into research. That's what Australia needs. The Americans have spent a lot of money on research and no doubt they are very advanced. They would be ahead of us in research but I believe our concept is unique.”

As he talks, Dr Chang grips the artificial heart. He is sitting in his small, dark office in St Vincent's after a long operating day. It seems strange that the man with enough confidence to start a national heart transplant program, in 1984, and now create an artificial heart, has some doubts about his work.

He is worried about a patient in the intensive care unit upstairs, who is surviving on an imported artificial heart and may not survive the night (and did not). He is also worried about the costs incurred and the ethics of his operation. ““At any one time there are five or six people in that room taking care of the patient,” he says. “It’s very expensive. I think we do go to great lengths to try to save people’s lives. People think a transplant was going to great extents, but when you put in an artificial heart, that’s really...”

He finds it hard, in his tiredness, to finish the sentence. “I guess there’s going to be some critics who say we're socially irresponsible.”

But isn’t the use of the artificial heart just one step on from transplants?

“Yes, it’s a bridge to the transplant. Philosophically, that’s not necessarily the best thing to do. If you have a list of people waiting for transplants, there are two main priorities: their sickness and the length of time on the waiting list. Quite obviously, if you operate on someone who is reasonably well you will get a good result.

“If you put an artificial heart in somebody who is dying, they immediately get priority for the next transplant. You wonder, should a rare gift like a heart be given to a very sick person, who might well die, or should you give it to a comparatively well person who you know has a very good chance of living? It’s one of those very vexed situations.

“I think it’s important for the Australian public to be aware of what’s going on in the medical profession because good publicity is good for doctors. Too often we have bad publicity.”

He is worried that the public thinks doctors are interested only in making money, either forgetting (or not knowing) that patients on the St Vincent's transplant program are not charged for their care. “You cannot place a value on a heart transplant,” he says.

“It costs something like $100,000 to keep a transplant patient alive. The cost is about $75,000 per transplant in the first transplant year. That is not going to any doctors; it is the cost of looking after the patient — the staff, the materials used, and this includes the drugs, which cost about $15,000. It’s not cheap. But how can you put a price on that operation? You can’t. The organ is a very important and precious gift. It is the gift of life. It benefits not only the recipient; it also benefits the community generally as that feeling of goodwill from such generosity is generated to all who come in contact with the transplant procedure.”

In other interviews Dr Chang has given, and there are not many, he has played down his achievements. On lung transplants, in 1988, he said: “It’s nothing spectacular. It’s just taking a lung out and putting a new one in.”

Last year, he said: “Heart transplantation in Australia has become just another treatment. There is nothing glamorous or special about heart transplants anymore.”

Of his latest brainchild, Dr Chang says: “I’ve always been very mechanically minded. I enjoy tinkering with things. Mind you, this is not entirely my idea. I’ve got good people working with me. We toss ideas around and then we come up with something.”

He decided from the outset to involve only Australian companies in the heart’s production. “Ultimately it will be an all-Australian product,” he says. “That’s what I want. We should be able to stand up and say, ‘We can do all those things in Australia’.”

THE BEAT GOES ON

• May 1953: First successful open-heart surgery, to correct a hole in the heart, performed by John Gibbon at America’s Mayo Clinic. In March 1953, Clarence Denis in New York did a similar operation, but the patient subsequently died of other causes and the surgeon never received the credit he deserved.

• March 1957: Australia’s first open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass to repair a hole in the heart, performed by Ken Morris at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne.

• November 1957: Two great US surgeons, Henry Bahnson and Frank Spencer, from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, visit Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, and perform 10 open-heart operations, all of which are successful.

• 1966, Texas: Marcel DeRudder, 65, has an artificial heart implanted inside his body. He lives for five days.

• December 3, 1967: In Cape Town, Dr Christiaan Barnard transplants the heart of a young woman killed in a car accident into 55-year-old Louis Washkansky, who dies after 18 days.

• October, 1968: Dr Harry Windsor performs Australia’s first heart transplant. The middle-aged man died from infection after six weeks.

• 1980: The anti-rejection drug cyclosporin becomes available, making transplants infinitely more feasible.

• February 1982: In the US, 61-year-old dentist Dr Barney Clark becomes the first man to survive the immediate post-operative period with an artificial heart, living for 111 days in hospital.

• February 1984: Dr Victor Chang performs Australia’s first heart transplant of the modern era by giving new life to a 39-year-old South Australian shearer, Peter Apthorpe.

• August 1986: Aged 54, William Schroeder dies in the US after 20 months on the Jarvik-7, making him the longest survivor in the history of artificial hearts.

• December 1989: One-year-old Heidi Gellert becomes Australia’s youngest heart-transplant recipient.

The Heart and Heart Surgeries

Exciting News: we’ve just launched a new page on our website ‘The Heart and Heart Surgeries.’ This has all definitions of different heart related information you’ve always wanted to know, it’s a useful resource for general information about the heart and heart surgeries. Let us know if you want us to add more information for you.

Harvest Scroll

A section from the "The Harvest of Endurance” scroll that is part of the collection held at the National Museum of Australia. 

It was created to represent the history of Chinese Australians and includes Dr Chang. 

Find out more about the scroll on the NMA website: https://www.nma.gov.au/explore/features/harvest-of-endurance/creating

Dr Chang’s Work Continues – update from Dr Jiang in Beijing

Dr Wenjian Jiang, the Victor Chang Foundation’s inaugural grant recipient and Surgical Fellow from China, has been putting the skills and knowledge he learnt here at St Vincent’s, Sydney into practice.

Since his Fellowship ended just over a year ago, he now has his own team in Anzhen Hospital, Beijing. Dr Wei has performed around 20 heart transplant surgeries, as well as focusing on the valve repair that he learned under Dr Jansz’s team. Recently he was awarded his Cardiac Surgeon Professorship and is now a senior consultant; this means he can now have masters and PHD students working with him. 

He said: “Many thanks to the Victor Chang Foundation for giving me this precious chance.”

Dr Victor Chang believed passionately in sharing knowledge and skills, particularly in Asia, in cardiac surgery in order to give patients the greatest opportunity to live longer.  The Victor Chang Foundation grants money in two areas and Dr Wei’s success fulfils one of the VCF’s missions to train surgeons in order to give them the opportunity to take new skills and knowledge back to their home countries.

Please make a donation today to continue Dr Victor Chang’s work: https://victorchangfoundation.com/donate

Announcing newest Victor Chang Foundation Surgical Fellow, Dr Shingo Takahara

The Victor Chang Foundation is proud to announce our newest grant recipient, Dr Shingo Takahara from Japan.

Over the next two years the Victor Chang Foundation Surgical Fellowship will give Dr Takahara the opportunity to learn cardiac surgical techniques, including heart transplantation, from some of the world’s leading heart specialists at St Vincent’s Hospital, including pre-eminent Australian surgeon Dr Paul Jansz. Dr Takahara will take these skills back to Japan to save the lives of thousands of people with heart disease, and to teach other surgeons the skills he has learnt.

“Japanese surgeons hardly experience this advanced therapy for end-stage heart failure” says Dr Takahara. “The experience from the fellowship at St Vincent Hospital will help me to develop my skills and knowledge in this field as well as to promote organ transplantation as one of the standard therapeutic options in Japanese society, which in turn would contribute to further improvement of this therapy, particularly in Asia.” 

Most recently Dr Takahara was working in Miyagi Children’s Hospital in the Department of Cardiac Surgery. “I would like to study paediatric cardiac heart transplantation as well” says Shingo Takahara. Congenital heart diseases are the cause for almost twice the number of deaths in children than all other children’s cancers combined.

“Obviously heart transplantation was the reason my father and his team was well known in Australia and Asia however he never forgot his deep-felt ties to China. This is one of the main reasons he started his Foundation – to pass on his knowledge and skills to heart surgeons around Asia; this really was my father’s absolute passion. I know he would be so delighted that we are continuing the work of his Foundation. I must also mention that he was striving to be innovative in the area of cardiac surgery.” says Vanessa Chang, CEO of the Victor Chang Foundation, and daughter of Victor Chang. 

Dr Chang’s determination to teach Asian surgeons advanced cardiac techniques continues through his Foundation. With access to training via the Victor Chang Foundation heart surgeons will operate on patients in Asia so they have a much greater chance of surviving. 

Please help us continue the Foundation’s work by visiting victorchangfoundation.com/donate

Dr Takahara at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney.

THE BABY WHO SHOULD HAVE DIED - article about Victor Chang from 1976

An incredible article from the National Library Australia’s Trove archives.

“I was only 7 years old but I still distinctly remember my father coming home and telling me that he’d operated on a baby who had a hole in her heart. I had plenty of questions back then and I’m still amazed by surgeons who are able to operate on such tiny hearts.” Vanessa Chang

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51603649/5790905

In triumph and relief, Mrs Betty Martin beams at her tiny daughter, who is now gaining strength and weight in a Sydney children's hospital. At right, with husband Terry. The fight for baby Emma's life began five months ago.

THE BABY WHO SHOULD HAVE DIED TINY

Emma Louise is a born fighter. She came into the world last September, 12 weeks premature, weighed 0.96 kilograms (21b 2oz) and had a hole in her heart. The skill of a surgeon and a

paediatrician, dedicated nurses, and her young parents' love kept Emma alive. She was smaller than the average child's favorite doll and as light as a loaf of bread when she was wheeled into the theatre for life-or-death surgery.

A leading Sydney surgeon - he was part of the three-man team who performed Australia's first heart transplant – closed the hole that was causing the trouble.

Emma Louise (her names mean "energetic" and "famed fighter") pulled through the operation, but the battle for life was not over. Post-operative complications set in. Emma had respiratory trouble, too. Several times in the first few days of her life she had stopped breathing, so doctors put her on a respirator.

But here was one little girl who wanted to live . . . and everyone was on her side. Sister Anne, a Catholic nursing nun and matron of St Margaret's Children's Hospital in Sydney, summed it up: "We pray for all our babies here, but there were special prayers for Emma Louise. I've been at St Margaret's, first the maternity hospital and now the children's hospital, since January, 1937, and I can't remember such a special little baby. It was a miracle she survived."

The surgeon. Victor Chang, said: "She was so very tiny that my instruments seemed far too big for her.

"She would have died without the operation and yet her chances of surviving it were slim. Surgery alone did not save baby Emma. Most of the credit must go to the excellent care of the nursing staff. They gave her 24-hour attention."

Emma's paediatrician (whose name cannot be published for ethical reasons) agreed that the nursing care had contributed greatly to the baby's recovery. "The child was close to death many times and often I thought we'd lose her." he said. "Her parents have been through absolute hell."

Perfectly formed

Betty Martin. Emma's 25-year-old mother, is all smiles now but her face clouds when she talks about her baby's fight for survival.

For Mrs Martin and her husband Terry, the ordeal began early on September 18, at their Warwick Farm home unit.

"I'd had bad back pains the day before, and wasn't worried because the baby was not due until December. But I woke about 4am and suddenly knew I was in labor.

"I was frightened and hysterical. 'Oh, my God', I thought, I'm going to lose my baby'."

But even then. Emma was a tighter. When she was born in Bankstown District Hospital she was a good healthy color and, in spite of her tiny size, was perfectly formed. That gave Mrs Martin hope.

She did not see her child for a week; then mother and daughter met through the walls of a humidicrib in the intensive care ward at St Margaret's, where Emma had been taken after she was born.

"She was such a bright little thing and she was all mine. I thought she was beautiful."

But all the time there was the acute concern about Emma's breathing problems: and then the doctors found a heart murmur.

'The way I reacted when they told me they would have to operate," said Mrs Martin, "was quite funny. I’d been crying day in and day out ever since Emma was born but when I heard this news I went into shock. I was calm and numb. I didn't feel anything." So, at 13 days old. Emma underwent heart surgery. It was the longest day of the Martins* lives.

When told later that the upper lobe of Emma's right lung had collapsed, Mrs Martin again responded with outward calm.

"So much was happening, I think I was immune to any more shock. Then, about a
week after the operation, she had a funny turn. Her temperature soared and the heart monitor went berserk.

"I almost gave up hope then. All I could think of was that she was going to die. I
kept saying it over and over again. 'She's going to die, she's going to die'."

The relapse passed the next day, and from then on it was a slow and often
doubtful road to recovery for Emma. Gradually she grew stronger and gained
weight. The final hurdle was overcome just before Christmas when she was weaned off
the respirator.

At long last, on January 14, after just on 17 weeks. Betty Martin knew the joy every mother feels when she holds her baby for the first time. There were tears of happiness and relief in her eyes as she cradled and fed the little bundle.

Emma Louise now weighs around 2.5 kilograms (51b 8oz). Any day her parents will take her home to the crib that has been empty so long. Sister Anne's prayers have been answered.

Story, GILLIAN CHALMERS

Pictures, KEVIN BROWN

Dr Wenjian Jiang on concluding his Victor Chang Surgical Fellowship

The inaugural Surgical Fellowship with the Victor Chang Foundation has now come to a close. Dr Wenjian Jiang is now returning to the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, China. Here he will apply the knowledge and skills learnt over 22 months working with Dr Paul Jansz in Sydney.

While Dr Jiang is sad to leave Australia, he believes this is what Dr Victor Chang would have wanted – for skills in heart surgery to be taught here and taken back to his (Victor’s) home country to teach other surgeons, and help communities, in China.

“It is my great honour to be awarded as the inaugural Victor Chang Foundation Surgical Fellow. [I am] greatly inspired by the legendary cardiac surgeon Dr Victor Chang.

“I have helped more than 70 cases of heart implantation, around 30 cases of retrieval and over 500 cases of other cardiothoracic surgeries. I think this experience is important for me to help the development of my career after returning to Beijing.

“Many thanks for the Victor Chang Foundation to give me this precious chance.”        

Dr Jiang looks forward to sharing the knowledge and skills he learnt here under Dr Jansz with other Chinese cardiac surgeons, and save the lives of countless people by doing so.

More Women Studying Medicine

Recently the Chang family provided us with this wonderful image of Dr Victor Chang when he was studying at Sydney University in 1962. One thing that really struck us was that there are no women.

We wondered how much has changed since then so we asked our friends at Sydney University. Are a lot more women studying medicine? For example, Dr Emily Granger who is one of Australian’s pioneering Cardiothoracic and Heart Lung Transplant surgeons serves on our Grants committee. Read more about her here.

This year at Sydney University 46% of students studying medicine are women. That’s an enormous change!

We here hope that Dr Victor Chang has inspired the next generation of both women and men to study cardiology, and to adopt Dr Chang’s mission, to share knowledge and innovation in this field.

Donations 2021

As you know COVID has changed the world we live in, especially for charities who struggle to raise funds at the best of times and even more so now. 

Despite this there have been many generous people who have made a donation to the Victor Chang Foundation this year – your gifts are so very much appreciated, and you are the people who help us continue my father’s work so thank you.

My father, Victor Chang, created this grant-making Foundation in 1984 to educate and innovate in the space of cardiac surgery and cardiology and we need donations to continue his work. Tax time is around the corner and this is an ideal time to consider making a donation to his Foundation.

Donations over the past year have enabled our inaugural surgical fellow, Dr Jiang, to learn and practice heart and lung transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, and mini-invasive cardiac surgery from the world-class team led by Dr Paul Jansz.

Apart from training more cardiac surgeons throughout Asia the Victor Chang Foundation needs funds to help develop a total, implantable, artificial heart. This is a project that requires a massive amount of work and funds and we are extremely excited to be involved.

We'd love you to be involved too and a donation from you will help achieve this. Any donation, large or small will move us closer to our goal. Thank you.

Regards, Vanessa Chang
CEO, Victor Chang Foundation

Victor Chang joins Sydney's ferry fleet

Travellers on Sydney Harbour now have the opportunity learn about the work of the late Dr Victor Chang AC on the new Inner Harbour ferry named in his honour. Victor Chang’s name was chosen by the public as part of the Name Your Ferry competition. Speaking on behalf of her family, his daughter Vanessa Chang said this accolade would help celebrate her father 26 years after his passing.  “We feel deeply honoured and touched by this special tribute and we would like to thank those who voted for him to be amongst such esteemed Australians.”

Read more here

The Asian Executive features Dr Chang’s work

On a clear, sunny day in March 1986, the Queen of England presented a group of proud Australians with an Order of Australia. Some received awards for bravery, some for literature or service to the community. Dr Chang was awarded a Companion to the Order of Australia (AC) for ‘service to international relations between Australia and China and to medical science’. Dr Chang, with his wife and daughter, travelled to Canberra to watch him accept the award; it was one of many he would be presented with in his lifetime, but this one was different because it acknowledged his contribution to Australia–China relations and his unofficial role as Australia’s medical ambassador to Asia.

Read more on Asian Executive, or find the full article here.