Christian N Barnard: A Man Who Dared the First Human to Human Heart Transplant

Abstract

Heart transplant had already developed by a group of US surgeons in the early 1950s, and it was the American pioneer Norman Shumway who validated the technical feasibility in a dog model at Stanford University in 1958. This milestone in medicine was the beginning of a huge race for numerous physicians and researchers to make this operation a clinical reality. Barnard was intrigued by the idea to perform heart transplantation at Groote Schuur Hospital and therefore made it a major focus in his department in the early 1960s. While Shumway and co-workers were further refining the surgical technique in these year, based on his extensive cardio-surgical experience, Barnard was already convinced about the technical feasibility and wanted to enter this new field of cardiac surgery. To accomplish his goal, he recognized that he had to learn more about immunosuppressive therapy and therefore he spent a few months in Richmond, VA, USA, to obtain this important knowledge for postoperative care. In 1966, when Shumway and colleagues announced that they would be ready for a first human patient, Barnard moved ahead of them on 3 December 1967, and performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplantation.