Christiaan Barnard

Chris Barnard redirects here. For other uses, see Chris testinal atresia".[1] Barnard described the two years he
Barnard (disambiguation).
spent in the United States as the most fascinating time
in my life.
Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922
2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the worlds rst successful humanto-human heart transplant.

Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was

appointed cardiothoracic surgeon at the Groote Schuur
Hospital, establishing the hospitals rst heart unit.[1] He
was promoted to full-time lecturer and Director of Surgical Research at the University of Cape Town. In 1960,
he ew to Moscow in order to meet Vladimir Demikhov,
a top expert on organ transplants.[2] In 1961 he was appointed Head of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery
at the teaching hospitals of the University of Cape Town.
He rose to the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in
1962. Barnards younger brother Marius, who also studied medicine, eventually became Barnards right-hand
man at the department of Cardiac Surgery.[1] Over time,
Barnard became known as a brilliant surgeon with many
contributions to the treatment of cardiac diseases, such
as the Tetralogy of Fallot and Ebsteins anomaly. He was
promoted to Professor of Surgical Science in the Department of Surgery at the University of Cape Town in 1972.
Among the many awards he received over the years, he
was named Professor Emeritus in 1984.

Early life

Barnard grew up in Beaufort West, Cape Province, Union

of South Africa. His father, Adam Barnard, was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church.[1] One of his four
brothers, Abraham, died of a heart problem at the age
of ve. Barnard matriculated from the Beaufort West
High School in 1940, and went to study medicine at the
University of Cape Town Medical School, where he obtained his MB ChB in 1945.

Career

Barnard did his internship and residency at the Groote

Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, after which he worked as
a general practitioner in Ceres, a rural town in the Cape
Province.[1] In 1951, he returned to Cape Town where he
worked at the City Hospital as a Senior Resident Medical
Ocer, and in the Department of Medicine at the Groote
Schuur Hospital as a registrar.[1] He completed his masters degree, receiving Master of Medicine in 1953 from
the University of Cape Town. In the same year he obtained a doctorate in medicine (MD) from the same university for a dissertation titled The treatment of tuberculous meningitis.

3 First successful heart transplant

Following the rst successful kidney transplant in 1953,
in the United States, Barnard performed the second kidney transplant in South Africa in October 1967, the
rst being done in Johannesburg the previous year.[3][4]
Barnard experimented for several years with animal heart
transplants.[1] More than 50 dogs received transplanted
hearts.[1][5] With the availability of new breakthroughs
introduced by several pioneers, amongst them Norman
Shumway, several surgical teams were in a position to
prepare for a human heart transplant.[1] Barnard had a patient willing to undergo the procedure, but as with other
surgeons, he needed a suitable donor.[1][5]

In 1956, he received a two-year scholarship for postgraduate training in cardiothoracic surgery at the University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, United States under openheart surgery pioneer Walt Lillehei.[1] It was during this
time that Barnard rst became acquainted with fellow
future heart transplantation surgeon Norman Shumway,
who along with Richard Lower did much of the trailblazing research leading to the rst successful human heart
transplant.[1] In 1958 he received a Master of Science in
Surgery for a thesis titled The aortic valve problems in
the fabrication and testing of a prosthetic valve.[1] The
same year he was awarded Doctor of Philosophy degree
for his dissertation titled The aetiology of congenital in-

He performed the worlds rst human heart transplant operation on 3 December 1967, in an operation assisted by
his brother, Marius Barnard; the operation lasted nine
hours and used a team of thirty people.[1] The patient,
Louis Washkansky, was a 54-year-old grocer, suering
from diabetes and incurable heart disease.[1][5] Barnard
later wrote, For a dying man it is not a dicult decision
because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to
the bank of a river lled with crocodiles, you will leap into
1

5 PERSONAL LIFE

the water, convinced you have a chance to swim to the

other side. The donor heart came from a young woman,
Denise Darvall, who had been rendered brain damaged in
an accident on 2 December 1967, while crossing a street
in Cape Town.[1] After securing permission from Darvalls father to use her heart, Barnard performed the transplant. Rather than wait for Darvalls heart to stop beating,
at his brother Marius Barnards urging, Christiaan had
injected potassium into her heart to paralyse it and render her technically dead by the whole-body standard.[1]
Twenty years later, Marius Barnard recounted, Chris
stood there for a few moments, watching, then stood back
and said, 'It works.'"[1][5] Washkansky survived the operation and lived for 18 days. However, he succumbed to
pneumonia as he was taking immunosuppressive drugs.
Though the rst patient with the heart of another human being survived for only a little more than two weeks,
Barnard had passed a milestone in a new eld of lifeextending surgery.
Barnard was celebrated around the world for his accomplishment. He was photogenic, and enjoyed the media
attention following the operation. Barnard continued to
perform heart transplants. A transplant operation was
conducted on 2 January 1968, and the patient, Philip
Blaiberg, survived for 19 months. Dirk van Zyl, who re- Christiaan Barnard in Italy in 1968
ceived a new heart in 1971, was the longest-lived recipient, surviving over 23 years.[6]
Barnard performed ten orthotopic transplants (1967
1973). He was also the rst to perform a heterotopic heart
transplant, an operation that he devised. Forty-nine consecutive heterotopic heart transplants were performed in
Cape Town between 1975 and 1984.
Many surgeons gave up cardiac transplantation due to
poor results, often due to rejection of the transplanted
heart by the patients immune system. Barnard persisted
until the advent of ciclosporin, an eective immunosuppressive drug, which helped revive the operation throughout the world. He was also the rst surgeon to attempt
xenograft transplantation in a human patient, while attempting to save the life of a young girl unable to leave
articial life support after a second aortic valve replacement.

Public life

Barnard was an outspoken opponent of South Africas

laws of apartheid, and was not afraid to criticise his nations government, although he had to temper his remarks
to some extent to travel abroad. Rather than leaving his
homeland, he used his fame to campaign for a change
in the law. Christiaans brother, Marius Barnard, went
into politics, and was elected to the legislature on an antiapartheid platform. Barnard later stated that the reason
he never won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
was probably because he was a "white South African".[7]

5 Personal life
Barnards rst marriage was to Aletta Gertruida Louw,
a nurse, whom he married in 1948 while practising
medicine in Ceres. The couple had two children
Deirdre (born 1950) and Andre (19511984).[1][8] International fame took a toll on his personal life, and in
1969, Barnard and his wife divorced. In 1970, he married
heiress Barbara Zoellner when she was 19, the same age
as his son, and they had two children Frederick (born
1972) and Christiaan Jr. (born 1974).[9] He divorced
Zoellner in 1982.[9] Barnard married for a third time in
1988 to Karin Setzkorn, a young model.[9] They also had
two children, Armin (born 1990) and Lara (born 1997),
but this last marriage also ended in divorce in 2000.[9]
Barnard described in his autobiography The Second Life
a one-night extramarital aair with Italian lm star Gina
Lollobrigida,[1][10] that occurred in January 1968. During
that visit to Rome he received an audience from Pope Paul
VI.[11]
In October 2016, U.S. Congresswoman Ann McLane
Kuster (D-NH) stated that Barnard sexually assaulted her
when she was 23 years old. According to Kuster, he attempted to grope her under her skirt, while seated at a
business luncheon with Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA),
whom she was a staer for at the time.[12][13][14]

Retirement

Barnard retired as Head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town in 1983 after developing
rheumatoid arthritis in his hands which ended his surgical career. He had struggled with arthritis since 1956,
when it was diagnosed during his postgraduate work in
the United States.[1] After retirement, he spent two years
as the Scientist-In-Residence at the Oklahoma Transplantation Institute in the United States and as an acting consultant for various institutions.
He had by this time become very interested in anti-aging
research, and his reputation suered in 1986 when he
promoted Glycel, an expensive anti-aging skin cream,
whose approval was withdrawn by the United States
Food and Drug Administration soon thereafter.[15] He
also spent time as a research advisor to the Clinique la
Prairie, in Switzerland, where the controversial rejuvenation therapy was practised.[16]
Barnard divided the remainder of his years between
Austria, where he established the Christiaan Barnard
Foundation, dedicated to helping underprivileged children throughout the world, and his game farm in Beaufort
West, South Africa.

Death

Christiaan Barnard died on 2 September 2001, while on

holiday in Paphos, Cyprus. Early reports stated that he
had died of a heart attack, but an autopsy showed his
death was caused by a severe asthma attack.[17]

Books

South Africa: Sharp Dissection

50 Ways to a Healthy Heart
Body Machine

9 See also
Organ transplantation
Ren Favaloro
Pierre Grondin
Hamilton Naki
Georey Tovey

10 References
[1] McRae, D. (2007). Every Second Counts. Berkley.
[2] Bosco, Teresio (1968) Uomini come noi, Societ Editrice
Internazionale
[3] Barnard, Marius. Dening Moments.
[4] Lederer, Susan E. (2008). Flesh and Blood: Organ Transplantation and Blood Transfusion in Twentieth-Century
America. Oxford University Press. p. 174. ISBN 9780-19-516150-2.
[5] Memories of the Heart.
Daily Intelligencer.
Doylestown, Pennsylvania. 29 November 1987. p.
A-18.
[6] Dirk van Zyl, 68; Had '71 Transplant. New York Times.
7 July 1994. Retrieved 28 March 2009.
[7] Its the quality of survival thats important. Hinduonnet.com (31 October 1997). Retrieved on 2015-06-30.

Christiaan Barnard wrote two autobiographies. His rst

book, One Life, was published in 1969 and sold copies [8]
worldwide. Some of the proceeds were used to set up the
Chris Barnard Fund for research into heart disease and
heart transplants in Cape Town. His second autobiogra- [9]
phy, The Second Life, was published in 1993, eight years
[10]
before his death.
Apart from his autobiographies, Dr Barnard also wrote
several other books including:
The Donor
Your Healthy Heart
In The Night Season
The Best Medicine
Arthritis Handbook: How to Live With Arthritis
Good Life Good Death: A Doctors Case for Euthanasia and Suicide

"Christiaan Barnard, celebrated pioneer of heart transplant surgery, dies aged 78", The Independent, 3 September 2001. Retrieved 18 September 2010.
Christiaan Barnard Biography. Retrieved 10 June 2009.
Barnard, Chris (1994). Druh dech [The Second Life] (in
Czech). Prague: Lidov noviny. pp. 7071. ISBN 807106-096-8.

[11] Pope Tells Barnard Of 'Heart' Prayers. Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 1968-01-30. Retrieved 201610-08.
[12] http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20161013/news/
310139819/

[13] http://www.nh1.com/news/
rep-annie-kuster-tells-concord-monitor-famous-doctor-sexually-assaulted-h
[14] http://www.usnews.com/news/
politics/articles/2016-10-13/
trump-comments-prompt-congresswoman-to-share-assault-story

11

[15] Altman, Lawrence K. (3 September 2001). Christiaan

Barnard, 78, Surgeon For First Heart Transplant, Dies.
The New York Times. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
[16] Cooper, David K. C. (3 September 2001). Obituary:
Christiaan Barnard. The Guardian. Retrieved 2 December 2013.
[17] Autopsy conrms asthma killed Barnard. Cyprus Mail.
5 September 2001. Archived from the original on 27
September 2007. Retrieved 15 March 2007.

11

External links

Christiaan Barnard: his rst transplants and their

impact on concepts of death
To Transplant and Beyond : First Human Heart
Transplant
In Memoriam : Christiaan Neethling Barnard
40th anniversary of rst human heart transplant
Ocial Heart Transplant Museum Heart Of Cape
Town

EXTERNAL LINKS

12
12.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Christiaan Barnard Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard?oldid=744755640 Contributors: Tobias Hoevekamp,

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