When Fiona Coote had a heart failure in 1984, a transplant was the only option. Three decades later, one of the surgeons who operated on the teenager believes heart transplants will soon be a thing of the past.

The director of heart-lung surgery and transplantation at St Vincent's Hospital, Phillip Spratt, says technological advances in artificial heart pumps will make transplant surgery redundant.

Gift of 30 years: Fiona Coote with Phillip Spratt at St Vincent's Hospital. Credit:Anthony Johnson

Almost 40 per cent of patients at the hospital's heart-lung transplant unit have the devices implanted, which keep them alive for years, in some cases until they undergo surgery.

''No transplant program will ever be able to treat all the people who are suffering or in ill-health,'' Associate Professor Spratt says.