20 Years After First Human Heart Transplant, 1987 May See 4000 Procedures Performed Worldwide

Abstract

THIS WEEK marks the 20th anniversary of the first human heart transplant (<i>JAMA</i>1967;202:23-24). Christiaan N. Barnard, MD, PhD, the surgeon who performed that transplant, recalled in a recent interview the events leading up to the historic operation. Cardiac transplantation to Barnard was merely a "new surgical technique." He began to think human heart transplants might be feasible when he read of a technique in 1959 in which the posterior walls of the recipient's atria were left behind. "Immediately, cardiac transplantation became a very straightforward surgical technique because it meant that you didn't have to anastomose the two vena cavae and the four pulmonary veins—all you had to anastomose were the two atria," he says. After studying for several months in the United States, Barnard, who is currently a scientist-in-residence at the Oklahoma Transplantation Institute, Baptist Medical Center, Oklahoma City, returned to South Africa ready to begin the patient-selection process.