Today in History: Christiaan Barnard conducts the first successful human heart transplant
The technique Barnard employed was initially developed by a group of American researchers in the 1950s.
On this day in 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky received the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. He was operated on by Dr Christiaan Barnard.
Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Chris Barnard, who trained at the University of Cape Town and in the United States, performed the revolutionary operation.
American surgeon, Norman Shumway, achieved the first successful heart transplant, in a dog, at Stanford University in California in 1958, but it had never been done on a human before. After Washkansky’s surgery, he was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the heart.
These drugs also left him susceptible to other illnesses, however, and 18 days later he died from double pneumonia. Despite the setback, Washkansky’s new heart had functioned normally until his death. In the 1970s, the development of better anti-rejection drugs made transplantation more viable.
Dr Barnard continued to perform heart transplant operations, and by the late 1970s many of his patients had been living up to five years with their new hearts. Successful heart transplant surgery continues to be performed today, but finding appropriate donors is extremely difficult.
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