The First Human Heart Transplant

The first human heart transplant was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in 1967 in South Africa. It involved removing a patient’s diseased heart and replacing it with a healthy heart from a recently deceased donor. The procedure demonstrated the possibility of replacing a failing organ with a functioning one, offering hope for patients with severe heart failure. Despite initial challenges like rejection and infection, it marked a breakthrough in surgical medicine and paved the way for modern transplant techniques that save thousands of lives today.