 | This article relies on a single source. (December 2023) |
A heart transplant is transplant, a type of surgery where someone's damaged or failing heart is removed and replaced with a healthier donor heart, likely to be from someone who passed just a few hours before the surgery. it is required that two or more healthcare providers declare the donor brain-dead.
It is otherwise known as an 'open heart procedure', taking several hours to accomplish. The first heart transplant on a human was done by Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky, a 54-year-old with both diabetes and incurable heart disease at the time. (A recent study suggests that the heart was taken from a 25-years-old girl, Denise Darvall, who was not brain-dead and her heart was arrested artificially, similarly to a non-voluntary active euthanasia.)
This procedure was carried out on Sunday 3rd December 1967.
