Heart transplantation historical perspective

Editor(s)-in-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D.; Associate Editor-In-Chief:

Historical Perspective
The first heart transplanted into a human occurred in 1964 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi when a team led by Dr. James Hardy transplanted a chimpanzee heart into a dying patient. The heart beat 90 minutes before stopping. Dr. James Hardy had performed the first human lung transplant the previous year.

The first human to human heart transplant was performed by Professor Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in December 1967. The patient was a Louis Washkansky of Cape Town, South Africa, who lived for 18 days after the procedure before dying of pneumonia. The donor was Denise Darvall, who was rendered brain dead in a car accident.

The first successful United States heart transplant was done at St. Lukes hospital in Houston Texas by Denton Cooley, M. D. in June 1968. The donor was a teenage suicide victim (who had had an aortic coarctation repaired as a young child, also by Dr. Cooley) and the recipient, Mr. Thomas, had terminal severe cardiomyopathy. He survived 8 months before dying of rejection of the transplanted heart.

A series of five subsequent heart transplants was done that month by Dr. Cooley followed by a number of transplants in Houston that year before the program was canceled leaving only Norman Shumway at Stanford University at San Francisco doing heart transplants and research on the rejection phenomenon.

1970 - Recipient selection criteria standardized

1973 - Surveillance endocardial biopsy

1977 - Distant donor heart procurement

1980 - Cyclosporine A