Taking Heart — Cardiac Transplantation Past, Present, and Future

Heart transplantation hit the international news with a splash in December 1967, when the first human-to-human transplantation was performed in South Africa by Christiaan Barnard, and the first transplantation in the United States, performed by Norman Shumway at Stanford University, followed a month later. Initial enthusiasm for the procedure was quickly curbed, however, when it became evident that survival rates were usually measured in days or weeks. This poor survival was due not to poor surgical technique, but to an inadequate understanding of the type of postoperative complications one should anticipate and a lack of tools for addressing these complications . . .