Image

As part of the 100th anniversary of our motto, "Bear Down," the University of Arizona is looking back at several of the most remarkable moments and accomplishments in the university's illustrious history, with an eye toward the "Bear Down" moments of the future.

Every day, nearly 1,000 people die from sudden cardiac arrest in the United States alone. Behind many of the most important advances in how we respond to that crisis is a research university in the Sonoran Desert that has radically changed what it means to save a human heart. 

The University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center has been tackling cardiovascular diseases since 1986, bringing together more than 160 researchers and clinicians with a shared ambition of a world without heart disease.

Revolutionizing CPR

For decades, cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR meant chest compressions interrupted by mouth-to-mouth rescue breathing. The Sarver Heart Center's Resuscitation Research Group, led by Dr. Gordon A. Ewy and Dr. Karl B. Kern, challenged that convention – first in the lab, then in the real world. Their research showed that chest-compression-only CPR, with no mouth-to-mouth contact at all, produce better outcomes compared to conventional CPR. Even when a patient's airway was completely blocked, the compression-only method held its own beyond six minutes of cardiac arrest. 

The group began championing this approach in Tucson in 2003. By 2004, the effort had gone statewide, with fire departments, paramedic teams and hospitals across Arizona offering free training in the technique.

The American Heart Association subsequently updated its national guidelines to endorse continuous chest compressions. Simpler to perform and requiring no rescue breathing, the technique eliminated the biggest reason bystanders hesitated to step in. 

A study of the campaign's impact published in 2010 had astonishing results. Among patients whose cardiac arrest was witnessed and whose hearts could still respond to a defibrillator, 34% survived with chest-compression-only CPR. With conventional CPR, just 18% survived – no better than when bystanders did nothing at all.

Creating an artificial heart

Another of the center's landmark contributions is even more ambitious – replacing the human heart altogether. In 1985, U of A surgeon Dr. Jack Copeland made medical history when patient Michael Drummond became the first person ever sustained by an artificial heart long enough to receive a donor transplant. 

The device evolved into the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, which remains the only FDA-approved total replacement heart for clinical use. 

Across more than 100 implants, the team kept nearly seven in 10 patients alive long enough to receive a donor heart. These were people who would otherwise have faced end-of-life care. Today, Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix implants more total artificial hearts than any program on earth and serves as a trial site for the BiVACOR, a next-generation artificial heart that uses a single magnetically levitated disc to pump blood to the entire body.

In 2024, a Sarver Heart Center team led by Dr. Hesham Sadek discovered something remarkable. In a subset of patients on mechanical support, heart tissue produced new muscle cells at a rate six times higher than what is seen in healthy hearts, suggesting that a failing heart, while supported by a mechanical pump, can regenerate muscle on its own. 

From a simpler way to save a life on a sidewalk to a machine that stands in for the human heart – and a new discovery that the heart just might fix itself – the Sarver Heart Center hasn't just advanced cardiovascular science. It has rewritten the rules.

Explore more Bear Down 100 moments at Arizona.edu/BearDown.