When was the first human heart transplant?
The first human heart transplant took place on December 3, 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa group of 20 surgeons, headed by Dr Christiaan Barnard, operated on Louis Wash Kansky aged 55, using the heart of a 24 year old donor, Denise Ann Darvall, who had been killed on a road accident. The patient lived for another 18 days. Since then, techniques have advanced greatly. There are so many people around At the world who have somebody else’s heart beating in their chest, and out of five recipients, four are still alive two years after the operation.
The full operation takes about five hours, during which a heart-lung machine keeps the patient’s blood circulating.
