360Christiaan Barnard performs the first human heart transplant
On 3 December 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, the surgeon Christiaan Barnard and his team transplanted a human heart for the first time. The patient, 53-year-old Louis Washkansky, lived for 18 days before dying of pneumonia. Today, thousands of heart transplants are performed every year.
By the 1960s, surgeons had learned to stop the heart during operations by using heart-lung machines, and kidney transplants were becoming possible. Replacing a whole heart was the next great challenge.
Louis Washkansky, a 53-year-old grocer in Cape Town, was dying of heart failure. On 3 December 1967, a young woman, Denise Darvall, suffered fatal injuries in a road accident, and her father agreed to donate her heart.
At Groote Schuur Hospital, Christiaan Barnard led a team of about 30 people in an operation lasting around five hours. When the new heart was shocked with electricity, it began to beat.
Washkansky woke and was able to talk. But the drugs used to stop his body rejecting the heart weakened his defences, and he died of pneumonia 18 days later.
The operation made world headlines. Early results were poor, but the drug ciclosporin, introduced in the early 1980s, greatly improved survival. Many heart transplant patients now live for decades.
- 1954
- The first successful kidney transplant
- 3 December 1967
- The first human heart transplant
- 1968
- Barnard's second patient lives for 19 months
- 1983
- Ciclosporin is approved for transplant patients
Sources: Groote Schuur Hospital Heart of Cape Town Museum · Britannica · British Heart Foundation.