When was the first human heart transplant?

 Heart transplant - is the first human heart transplant took place on December 3, 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa. A team of 20 surgeons headed by Dr. Christian Barnard, operated on Louis Washkansky, aged 55, using the heart of a 24 years old donor. Denise Ann Darvall, who had been killed in a road accident.

 Both the donor and the recipient were of the same blood group and the heart was kept in cooled oxygenated blood for more than three hours before transplantation. The operation took five hours and the new heart was only half the size of Washkansky's. The operation itseft was a success and within a few days Washkansky was sitting up eating and talking happily. The doctors were anxious about transplant rejection by the body and also post operative infection which did kill Eashkansky within a month of the transplant.

 In January 1968 a second transplant was carried out on Philip Blaiberg a 58 year old dentist who subsequently overcame a severe liver infection and lung condition thought to be the result of his body trying to reject the new heart. By the end of 1968 more than 100 transplants had been carried out in the United States, Britain, France, India, South America, Canada, Czechoslovakia and Israel. More than 40 patients survived. Blaiberg remained alive until August 17, 1969 and other patients survived for up to two and a half years but the number of operations declined. From December 1970 to May 1971 only six operations were performed. Caution took the place of optimism.