In 1986, a special surgery made its way into the history books — it was the first-ever implant of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart in Canada.
The recipient was Noella Leclair of Ottawa who had suffered a heart attack. The surgery took three-and-a-half hours and was meant as a bridge to a future transplant. And this approach worked. One week later, Noella received a human heart. The donor was a 44-year-old Montreal businessman killed in a traffic accident.
At a news conference after her treatment at the Ottawa Heart Institute, Noella spoke about her ordeal. “My husband has been saying from day one that I am the luckiest woman in the world,” she said to reporters before going home. Noella Leclair lived another two decades.
Dr. Keon, who performed more than 10,000 open-heart surgeries between 1969 and 2001 and founded the Ottawa Heart Institute in 1976 also performed this first-of its-kind procedure along with his surgical team.
