An Oxford surgeon has made medical history after saving a patient's life using a revolutionary metal heart.

Student Julie Mills became the first person in the world to benefit from the ground-breaking surgery, which was performed by a team from the John Radcliffe Hospital.

For six remarkable days, Julie survived with no pulse and no heartbeat, while blood was circulated around her body using the man-made pumping system.

The student had been given just 20 minutes to live after a rare virus attacked her heart.

The organ was failing fast under the strain of keeping blood circulating around her body.

It was then that Stephen Westaby, a surgeon at the John Radcliffe, stepped in to offer the student her only chance of survival.

The world-renowned surgeon performed an operation to install a pioneering artificial heart next to her own.

The pumping device had only been tried three times before in America and on each occasion the patient died.

But for Julie it proved successful by keeping her alive for six days. By then her own heart had recovered enough to start beating. Later, Julie was taken back to the operating theatre and the artificial organ removed.

Now the student, from Reigate, Surrey, is preparing to go back to college - only 12 weeks after being on the brink of death.

Mr Westaby, cardiac surgeon and head of the artificial heart programme at the John Radcliffe, said: "We really did not know if the body needs a pulse.

"It is our first success with this pump. "We think it is a very exciting development with wide implications for treating heart failure."

Mr Westaby, who has been working with Prof Richard Clarke from the Pittsburgh Heart centre, said he had made the assumption that the heart was like any other organ.

He said: "If you break a leg or tear a muscle and if you let them rest, they get better.

"If you could rest an acutely-sick heart and if you could get a pump to supply blood to the body we thought it might get better too."

The success of the surgery has astounded the medical world and could help many other patients.

Julie, a trainee teacher, became ill after suffering from flu-like symptoms.

Within hours her condition had deteriorated so fast that she was admitted to a high dependency heart unit.

Doctors contacted Mr Westaby at the John Radcliffe, and he offered to try and save her life.

Julie said: "I am feeling so good, never better.

"It is hard to believe that only 12 weeks ago I was so close to death.

"I was astounded when I was told what I had been through and I was the first person in the country to have this artificial heart." Six facts about artificial hearts

The artificial pump which saved Julie is about the size of a small orange.

The device, which costs £3,000, took seven years to develop

When switched on, the pump supplies blood to all the organs of the body so the heart does not have to do any work.

Unlike other artificial hearts, it does not mimic the heartbeat. Instead, it circulates blood in a continuous flow round the body, so there is no pulse.

It is intended as an emergency pump for a maximum of three weeks.

But just as pacemakers were first used to maintain heart rhythm during surgery, future technology could perhaps one day allow the device to keep patients alive for many years.

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