Modern life. What a mess, eh? The horrors persist, but so do we, and might I inspire just a little bit of relief: at least we’re not living in the timeline where every major surgery was a world-first.
There has to be a first time for everything, and when it comes to carving up the human body and tinkering around with the plumbing, the results can be a little mixed. Spare a thought, then, for Dr Christiaan Barnard, who in 1967 performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant. We specify human-to-human because a transplant had been (unsuccessfully) attempted in 1964 using a donor heart from a chimpanzee.
A man named Louis Washkansky was in desperate need of dramatic intervention with severe heart failure due to ischemic heart disease. With little time left, he readily agreed to the surgery, and so began the wait for a suitable heart donor.
Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman, lost her life in a traffic accident on December 2 that same year. Though her heart was still beating, she was pronounced brain dead. At last, Barnard’s opportunity had arrived.
Darvall’s heart was stopped and her sternum quickly split open to reveal a heart that was blue and still. It was given its own oxygenated blood supply and cooled to prevent ischemic damage during transplantation. Washkansky’s heart was then removed, and “for the first time in my life, I stared into an empty chest,” said Barnard to David KC Cooper of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “At that moment, the full impact of what I was attempting became abundantly clear to me.”
The donor heart was connected to Washkansky’s vessels without difficulty. It was, however, much smaller than his previous diseased heart, and it took some time for him to stabilize. Eventually, the heart got stronger in its new home, and his chest could be closed. Start to finish, it had taken almost five hours.
“Mr. Washkansky’s immediate recovery was excellent,” recalled Barnard. “For the first time in medical history, we were able to observe the effect that a healthy transplanted heart had in a patient who, until that time, was in severe heart failure.”
Of all things, then, it seems almost cruel that Washkansky’s new lease on life should be brought to a swift end by his lungs. He developed pneumonia, and – likely worsened by the immunosuppressive drugs needed to get patients through transplants – he got sicker and sicker until almost all his organs but the heart had failed. He died just 18 days after surgery (but remarkably, by heart transplant attempts five and six, the recipients’ success would see them live another 13 and 24 years, respectively).
Image credit: IFLScience
During this time, there had been something of a media circus. Vast sums of money were offered for photos and surgeons’ gloves, none of which were available because Barnard had never imagined the world would be so interested in what he was doing. The reaction was, however, mixed.
“The procedure was initially met with disgust,” writes neuroscientist Dr Austin Lim in Horror On The Brain: The Neuroscience Behind Science Fiction. “Instead of seeing the potential value of such a lifesaving endeavor, the public recoiled against the display of inhumanity.”
“People from around the world wrote scathing letters, calling Barnard sadistic, abnormal, and a butcher. They called for him to be arrested.”
It does sound a little like the start to a slasher movie: man saws up two people, creates one living thing (albeit, not living for very long). Thing is, a lot of science sounds confined to sci-fi… until it isn’t. For instance, did you know that some transplant recipients report personality changes after receiving organs? (Including a new appreciation for chicken nuggets).
If you’re into the twisty tales of science that read stranger than fiction, you won’t want to miss IFLScience’s next CURIOUS Live virtual event, where we’ll be talking to Lim about the science behind fear and the haunting stories that keep us up at night.
From the woman who saw dragons instead of faces, to “patient SM” who couldn’t feel fear, it’s going be a wild ride and better yet, Lim will be available in-chat to answer your questions. So, join us at CURIOUS Live on May 24, you might just learn something that keeps you up at night.
Source Link: What Happened In The First Human-To-Human Heart Transplant?
