A heart patient is dying at home while waiting for a decision to be made about his future.

Jurgen Baumgardt is waiting to be admitted to a cardiac hospital for an assessment on whether he is a suitable case for a heart transplant.

If he is accepted there is no guarantee when, or if, he will get a new heart because of a shortage of donors.

Mr Baumgardt had hoped he would be eligible to have a £100,000 operation to install an artificial pump in his heart, but he has been turned down because the procedure is still at an experimental stage in this country.

Mr Baumgardt's partner, Sue Dickens, said not being able to have the heart pump installed and the length of time it was taking to have a heart transplant assessment had, effectively, given him a death sentence.

She said: "Jurgen is having to wait and wait for a transplant operation that may never happen, while the artificial heart pump operation is not being done at all.

"It would have to take a tremendous amount of incredible luck for a heart to become available within the next few months for Jurgen that would be a perfect match.

"He is wasting away in front of me and becoming weaker all the time yet still nothing is happening.

"It makes me so angry and frustrated that he is being left to die while an operation that could make all the difference is not being carried out."

Mr Baumgardt said: "If I had the artificial heart put in weeks ago I could have been halfway towards a recovery instead of halfway to my grave."

Mr Baumgardt, 54, of Stoneham Road, Hove, was diagnosed with myocarditis and polymyocitis when he was admitted to Royal Sussex County Hospital in June this year.

The damage to his heart left it pumping at only ten per cent strength and without an operation he could die within months.

He developed pneumonia at the time the condition was diagnosed and heart specialists said he was too weak to be considered for a transplant.

He has now recovered from pneumonia and due to be assessed for a transplant at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London although no date has been set for him to go in.

A spokesman for the Royal Brompton said: "There has been a significant drop in donors in the last couple of years which is having an effect on us."