ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION On December 3,1967, Mr. Louis Waskansky underwent the first successful hu
man cardiac transplant, performed by Dr. Christian Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa. This milestone was reached after the technical aspects of orthotopic car diac transplantation had been described in 1959 by Ross M. Brock of Guy’s Hos pital in London. The following year Shumway published the seminal paper on orthotopic cardiac transplantation in which the technical aspects, recipient sup port and donor organ preservation were integrated into a single approach. The initial experience with heart transplantation in the ensuing twelve months after Barnard’s first operation was dismal: 71 of the first 100 recipients died. The intro duction of cyclosporine provided the next breakthrough that allowed hospital mor tality to drop below 10 percent and five-year survival rate to approach 80 percent.
