Christiaan Barnard- South African Cardiac surgeon

Christiaan Neethling Barnard was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant operation. 

Born: 8 November 1922, Beaufort West, South Africa

Died: 2 September 2001, Paphos, Cyprus

Between December 1967 and November 1974 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, ten heart transplants were performed, as well as a heart and lung transplant in 1971. Of these ten patients, four lived longer than 18 months, with two of these four becoming long-term survivors.

Barnard’s most important medical contribution was his courage to proceed with a human heart transplant at a time when other surgeons who had performed the operation only on animals continued to hesitate to be the first to transplant a heart in a human.

Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard, the South African surgeon who performed the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967, died yesterday in Cyprus. He was 78.

Dr. Barnard suffered a fatal asthma attack in the morning after going for a swim at a coastal resort in Paphos, where he had been vacationing, The Associated Press said, citing a statement from the Christiaan Barnard Foundation.

Dr. Barnard’s first heart transplant patient, Louis Washkansky, lived only 18 days, though his second, Dr. Philip Blaiberg, lived more than 19 months. A medical circus followed as surgeons elsewhere tried the experimental operation with little success.

Then with the development of more powerful antirejection drugs and additional experience, the heart transplant operation became standard. It has been performed an estimated 100,000 times around the world. Today the procedure is carried out in 160 hospitals in the United States alone, with a one-year success rate of 85 to 90 percent and a five-year success rate of 75 percent.

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