Cape Town - December 3 this year marked 55 years since Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first successful human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
The world’s first heart transplant came about as the result of a twin tragedy on December 3, 1967.
First, a 25-year-old woman called Denise Darvall had been involved in a terrible road accident that left her brain-dead.
At the same time, 54-year-old Louis Washkansky was in hospital, literally dying from heart disease.
Barnard, then an audacious 45-year-old surgeon at Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital, took the initiative to transplant Darvall’s heart into Washkansky’s body.
While this only enabled Washkansky to live a further 18 days, it catapulted the surgeon into instant worldwide superstardom.
Author James Styan, who wrote Heartbreaker: Christiaan Barnard and the first heart transplant” a biography of Barnard that was released to mark the 50th anniversary of that first operation, said the legacy reverberated around the world.
“Because even now if a heart is damaged only a transplant can keep you alive.”
He said the operation marked the first time in history that somebody died, had another person’s heart installed in their chest and was brought back to life for 18 days.
“The first successful heart transplant has been compared with the moon landing and the world could not believe it happened in Cape Town.
“Today it would be like Bafana Bafana winning the World Cup. It made people crazy.”
Barnard soon carried out a second transplant, and this patient led an active life for almost 19 months. Barnard’s fifth and sixth patients lived for almost 13 and 24 years, respectively.
Styan said that overnight Dr Barnard became the man everyone wanted to be associated with. “He met the US president, had an audience with the Pope in the Vatican. The whole world wanted to know him.”
Last year, Groote Schuur Hospital officially launched its primary fund-raising platform, the Groote Schuur Hospital Trust.
The hospital has continued to be an epicentre of innovation with 35 groundbreaking procedures culminating in 12 world firsts, five African firsts, and 18 South African firsts.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za