Defining moments in cardiology

In 1967, Christiaan Barnard carried out the first ever human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The patient and recipient of a new heart was 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, and the success of the operation took centre-stage in the world’s media as hourly bulletins followed his recovery. Though the heart functioned normally following the operation, and continued to do so until his death, Washkansky sadly succumbed to pneumonia and passed away 18 days after the operation. It is considered that the immunosuppressive drugs that he had been prescribed in order to stop his body from rejecting the new heart had left him susceptible to picking up infections, allowing the pneumonia to take hold. Other patients undergoing the trail-blazing surgery in subsequent years also suffered similar fates.

Following this, the 1970s saw significant developments in immunosuppressive drugs, namely the introduction of ciclosporin, which helped to greatly improve the prognosis and survival rates for patients undergoing cardiac transplant surgery in later decades. To this day, Barnard’s pioneering operation remains a milestone in cardiovascular medicine, and indeed medical history, and cardiac transplantation continues to be performed today to treat heart failure and other diseases, though rejection of the new organ remains problematic.

Explore our interactive timeline below to discover other defining discoveries and events in the history of cardiovascular medicine and cardiac surgery. From the first description of the anatomical structure of the heart in the 18th century, to the Nobel Prize-winning physician who performed the first cardiac catheterisation in the 1920s (on himself!), and the implantation of the world’s first leadless pacemaker in recent years, the field of cardiovascular medicine continues to evolve. Looking forward, the fast-changing technological landscape offers a realm of opportunity for the future: only time will tell how advances such as 3D printing, nanobots, and gene therapy will come to change the face of this specialty.

Featured image credit: National Institute of Cardiology Mural painting by Diego Rivera. CC BY 4.0 via Wellcome Images.

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