The First Heart Transplant and the Story Behind It
Channel: Everything Science
Date: 2020-02-12

Prior to 1967, the year of the first heart transplant, a heart problem could be a death sentence.

For years, doctors had attempted a variety of organ transplants, at first in monkeys and chimps, and then eventually successfully in humans in 1954 with a kidney transplantation.

But a successful heart transplant was the crown jewel in early transplanting. Experiments on dogs hinted that it was, at least theoretically, possible and a new heart would take as long as you kept the patient alive throughout the procedure.

On December 3rd, 1967, Christiaan Barnard made history when he completed the first successful human heart transplant.

Today we'll be talking about just how he did that and the technological developments that lead up to his historic achievement.

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