1st Human Heart Transplant (1967)

To see clipping in full size, click on image and zoom.

He received his heart transplant on 3 December 1967, at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The five hour operation at 1 am when surgeons removed the heart of 24-year-old Denise Darvall, who had very recently been fatally injured in a car accident. The procedure was performed by Professor Christiaan Barnard.

Although Washkansky died of double pneumonia eighteen days after the transplant because of a weakened immune system, Barnard regarded the surgery as a success because the heart was "not being stimulated by an electrical machine" but completely by Washkansky. As Barnard related in his book, One Life to Live, a decision was made on the fifth postoperative day to bombard Washkansky's system with immunosuppressants to guard against a potential rejection of the new heart. As later heart transplants would reveal, the signs noted at that time were part of a resettling program for the new heart and not necessarily an indication of rejection. Of course, as Washkansky and everyone else understood, the operation had never been done before, was entirely experimental, and they were, in effect, feeling their way in the dark. Today, however, the heart transplant operation is virtually routine.