The first heart transplant was performed on December 3, 1967 at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Capetown, South Africa.

South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard made medical history when he conducted the first open heart transplant on 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky. The surgery was a success.

Eighteen days after the operation, Washkansky died of double pneumonia. Drugs required to prevent Washkansky's immune system from attacking the new heart also supressed his body's ability to fight off other illnesses.

This was the first operation of its kind and made Barnard a household name worldwide.

Christian Barnard was born in South Africa in 1922. He worked as a surgeon at the Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town. After further training in America, he became a leading heart surgeon.

Barnard had demonstrated that heart transplants were possible. Even though many of his patients died soon after their operation, he had taken the first steps into a new form of surgery which is now routine in medical practice. In 1974, Christian Barnard carried out the first double heart transplant. He ended his career in surgery because of the impact of arthritis.

Heart transplantation has dramatically changed since Dr. Christiaan Barnard made history in 1967. Anti-rejection drugs and other advances during the 1980s have made heart transplantation an effective therapy for carefully selected patients with advanced heart disease.

Barnard died in 2001, ironically of disease to his heart.