When did the first human heart transplant take place?

          The scope of heart surgery has vastly increased ever since the introduction of the heart-lung machine in the 1950s. This machine pumps blood from the veins to the arteries without having to pass through the heart. Most of these machines oxygenate the blood, thus completely bypassing the lungs as well. By using this machine, the heart can be stopped and opened for upto four hours.

          In human heart transplant, the main problem was that the body’s natural defence system tended to reject a new organ. The problem was eventually eased by the discovery of the fact that if the tissue types and the blood group of both people were carefully matched, the person receiving the heart had a much better chance of survival. 

          It was because of the use of such modern techniques and apparatus that the first human hearts transplant became possible. It took place on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa. A team of 30 surgeons, headed by Dr. Christian Barnard, operated on Louis Washkansky, aged 55. The donor was 25 year old Denise Ann Darvall who had been killed in a road accident. 

          Both the donor and the recipient were of the same blood group and the heart was kept in cooled oxygenated blood for more than three hours before the transplantation. The operation took around five hours and the new heart was only half the size of Washkansky’s. The operation was successful. Within a few days Washkansky sat up, started taking food and talking happily. The doctors were anxious about transplant rejection by the body and also about post-operative infection which, in fact, did kill Washkansky within a month after the transplant.

          In January 1968, a second transplant was carried out on Philip Blaiberg, a 58-year old dentist, who subsequently overcame a severe liver infection and lung impairment which was thought to be the result of his body trying to reject the new heart. However it was successful.

          India’s first successful heart transplant operation was performed at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on August 3, 1994, when the damaged heart of a 42 year old man was replaced with that of a 35 year old woman who was brain-dead.

          Heart transplantation could not achieve wide acceptance and popularity due to the lack of complete success.