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A Short History:
The first successful
experimental heart transplant was performed in a dog in 1967 by surgeon
Dr. Norman Shumway at Stanford University, California in 1958.
The first human heart
transplant was performed on December 3, 1967 by surgeon Christiaan
Barnard at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
Barnard had studied medicine at the University of Cape Town and followed
heart training in the USA; he used surgical techniques developed by
American researchers in the 1950s. The transplant was performed in Lewis
Washkansky, a 53-year-old South African grocer who was suffering of a
chronic heart disease; the donor was a 25-year-old woman who died in an
automobile accident. Unfortunately, Mr. Washkansky died 18 days later of
a severe pneumonia but his new heart continued to function normally
until the end of his life.
During the following
years, the development of the drug cyclosporine allowed very successful
immune suppression therapy avoiding allograft rejection, with consequent
increased survival of heart and other organ allograft recipients.
According to
Statista, 22
heart transplants were performed in 1975, with a significant increase in
1990 (2,107) up to 3,658 in 2020. However, the main problem has always
been the availability of donor organs, with thousands of people in the
United States awaiting transplants.
Pathology of Heart
Transplantation:
Orthotopic heart
transplantation is the elective therapy for patients with end-stage
heart failure. The high success of allograft acceptance has been due to
improved criteria for HLA matching between recipients and donors,
improved immunosuppression protocols, and close monitoring for allograft
rejection using periodic endomyocardial biopsies. |
References:
Ahmed T, Jain A. Heart Transplantation. [Updated 2022 May 1]. In:
StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2022
Jan-.
Heart transplants in the U.S. 1975-2020. Published by John Elflein, Mar
8, 2022. Statista
C.D. Tan, M.K. Halushka, E.R. Rodriguez, Chapter 17 - Pathology of
Cardiac Transplantation, Editor(s): L. Maximilian Buja, Jagdish Butany,
Cardiovascular Pathology (Fourth Edition), Academic Press, 2016, pp
679-719, ISBN 9780124202191 |
