Heart Surgery and Transplants

Archive Report

Surgical Sensation: Heart Transplants

Progress in combating dread disease tends to move ahead slowly by way of many small bits and pieces of knowledge drawn from scientific research and the clinical experience of practicing physicians. Once in a while this slow-paced advance is marked by an achievement so extraordinary that it tends to overshadow the main route by which the healing arts go forward. A dramatic episode of this kind occurred on Dec. 3, 1967, when Dr. Christiaan Neethling Barnard of Cape Town, South Africa, performed the first human heart transplantation in medical history—a feat since repeated more than a dozen times by surgical teams on three continents.

Not since the announcement of the discovery of the Salk vaccine for poliomyelitis 14 years ago had an ...

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