Surgery: Transplants

Christian Barnard (1922 -

2001)
Just 50 years ago operations on the heart
were rarely performed because of the
risk of death and heart transplants were
unheard of. Christian Barnard pioneered
the first successful organ transplants.

Who was he?

Christian Barnard was born in South
Africa and worked as a surgeon at the
Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town.
After, further training in America, he
became a leading heart surgeon.
Christian Barnard

What brought him to prominence?

Barnard studied heart surgery at the University of Minnesota in the US and returned to
South Africa to set up a cardiac unit in Cape Town. In 1967 he transplanted the heart of a
road accident victim into a 59 year old man, Louis Washkansky. This was the first
operation of its kind. Unfortunately, Washkansky died 18 days later from pneumonia. the
drugs used to prevent the body rejecting the new heart adversely weakened his resistance
to infection.

Was Barnard successful?

One of Barnard's patients lived for over a year and a half after surgery, but patients
needed drugs to prevent the body rejecting the donor heart. these left them open to
infection and many died, just like Louis Washkansky. After a while, all heart operations
stopped because the risk of failure was considered too high.

In 1974 a researcher working in Norway discovered a new drug called cyclosporin. This
drug helped to overcome the body's rejection of the donor organs and protected the
patient against infection. Subsequent heart transplants were more successful and since the
late 1980s, the majority of patients have survived for more than two years after surgery.

Why is he so well known?

Barnard had demonstrated that heart transplants were possible. Even though many of his
patients died soon after their operation, he had taken the first steps into a new form of
surgery which is now routine in medical practice.