Heart Transplant Succeeds: Barnard Opens Medical Frontier
Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, on December 3, 1967. The donor was Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman fatally injured in a car accident. The recipient was Louis Washkansky, a 54-year-old grocer dying of heart failure. The surgery lasted nine hours. Washkansky survived 18 days before dying of pneumonia because the immunosuppressive drugs that prevented his body from rejecting the new heart also destroyed his ability to fight infection. Barnard became an instant global celebrity. His second transplant patient, Philip Blaiberg, survived 594 days. The procedure's early mortality rate was discouraging, but the introduction of cyclosporine in the 1980s revolutionized anti-rejection therapy. Today, roughly 6,000 heart transplants are performed annually worldwide.
December 3, 1967
59 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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