 PROF. CHRISTIAAN
BARNARD, M.D. He revolutionized medicine in the 20th century.
His pioneering achievement, the first human heart transplantation, has in the meantime
saved thousands of people’s lives.”On Saturday, I was a little known
surgeon in South Africa. The following Monday, I was world renowned.“ That's how
Prof. Christiaan Barnard recalled events in December of 1967, when he became the first
surgeon to perform a heart transplantation on a human being.
By 1967, Dr. Barnard was senior cardiothoracic surgeon at the Groote Schuur Hospital in
Cape Town, where he had introduced open-heart surgery and other pioneering surgical
procedures. Dr. Barnard had a patient, 55-year-old Louis Washkansky, who had diabetes and
incurable heart disease. Washkansky could either wait for certain death or risk transplant
surgery. He chose the surgery. At the same time in December of 1967 a woman in her mid-20s
was fatally injured in an automobile accident. She had had the same blood type as
Washkansky and died shortly after arriving at the hospital, but her heart was still
healthy.
In a five-hour operation on December 3rd, Dr. Barnard successfully replaced
Washkansky's diseased heart with the healthy one. It was a milestone in a new field of
life-extending surgery.
In 1974 he surprised the world again by placing a second heart in a patient without
removing the first one. |
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 PIONEER. With the first human heart transplantation he laid the
groundwork for a new era in medicine.
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LIFESAVER. His revolutionary operational methods have to present day
saved the lives of thousands of people. for future generations.
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| Pioneer. Prof. Barnard after the operation
that made history. He gave Louis Washkansky, 55, a new heart. |
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