A nuclear physicist by training who became a bio-engineer, Peer Portner was internationally renowned as an expert on mechanically assisted circulation and as a pioneer in artificial organs. He was best known as the inventor of an implanted electrical pump for heart failure patients, an electrically powered artificial heart called the left ventricular assist device(LVAD).

The left ventricle is a large muscular chamber of the heart that pumps blood out of the heart into the body. A LVAD helps a heart which cannot work effectively on its own, maintain its pumping ability. The device, sometimes known as a “bridge” to a heart transplant, can help a patient with very serious heart failure survive until a donor heart becomes available.

More than 100 leading medical centres in over 20 countries have implanted nearly 1,800 of the devices, known as Novacor Heart Assist Systems, into patients awaiting heart transplants.

Portner’s artificial heart was developed by a multidisciplinary team employed by the Novacor Medical Corporation. The device was evaluated by the Stanford University School of Medicine.

In 1984, in an operation carried out at Stanford Hospital, an artificial heart kept a patient alive for eight days until a heart transplant was obtained. It was the first time the device was successfully implanted into the chest of a patient.

An electrical pump and a bladder were placed inside the patient’s chest and wired to a battery outside his body. The patient, a 51-year-old man, had suffered a heart attack and a heart by-pass operation had not been successful.

A LVAD was implanted into his chest on 5 September 1984. Eight days later, the patient was given the heart of an 18-year-old student who had become brain dead after an accident in a car. The patient survived for some 20 years after the operation in a relatively stable condition. The pumps on earlier devices, powered by compressed air, were cumbersome and not practical. Portner’s system, however, proved effective and durable.

In 1993, Portner introduced a wearable version of the system that allowed patients to lead an essentially normal lifestyle. In 1994, one of the artificial hearts was permanently implanted, for the first time, in a patient at Cambridge University.

Peer Michael Portner was born, a British citizen, in Mombasa, Kenya on January 8, 1940. He studied at McGill University, Montreal, Canada where he was awarded the distinction of University Scholar. He gained a doctorate in experimental nuclear physics at McGill in 1968.

He was then appointed a National Research Council Fellow at Oxford University, where he began his lifelong study of artificial organs and implantable circulatory support systems. After Oxford, he joined Andros Incorporated, a research and development company in Berkeley, California, as a physicist.

In 1977, he was appointed a consulting associate professor of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and, in 1989, consulting professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the School.

He founded the Novacor Medical Corporation, Oakland, California in 1979, becoming its Chief Executive Officer and President. In 1988, Novacor Medical Corporation was acquired by Baxter Healthcare Corporation and Portner became the President and then Chairman of the Novacor Division of Baxter. He remained there until 2000.

Portner was President of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs and a President and Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

He was on the Board of Trustees of the International Federation for Artificial Organs and a member of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation. He was also a Fellow of: the American College of Cardiology; the American Heart Association; the European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAO); and the Biomedical Engineering Society. In 2005, the ESAO awarded him the Emil S. Bücher award for his achievements in the field of artificial organs research.

Portner died of cancer on 9 February 2009 at his home in Kensington, California.

His wife and two daughters survive him.

Peer Portner, scientist and medical inventor, was born on January 8, 1940. He died of cancer on February 9, 2009, aged 69