History of Heart Transplantation: a Hard and Glorious Journey

Heart transplantation from donation after circulatory death donors: Present and future

“…The news from South Africa was received with great interest and enthusiasm by the lay public and medical professionals. Several centers worldwide immediately started to duplicate the results, and over 100 heart transplants were performed from 17 countries in less than a year 2 . Unfortunately, during this timeframe, many heart transplant recipients died due to infections or graft failure.…”

“…Unfortunately, during this timeframe, many heart transplant recipients died due to infections or graft failure. Immunosuppression and graft function monitoring was not well established and a moratorium was placed on heart transplantation with only 10 heart transplantations performed in 1970 2 . Only four centers in the world continued transplantation, two in the US (Stanford, CA and Medical College of Virginia, VA), one in Cape Town South Africa and one in La Pitie Salpetrieri, Paris, France 2 …”

“…Several centers worldwide immediately started to duplicate the results, and over 100 heart transplants were performed from 17 countries in less than a year. 2 Unfortunately, during this timeframe, many heart transplant recipients died due to infections or graft failure. Immunosuppression and graft function monitoring was not well established and a moratorium was placed on heart transplantation with only 10 heart transplantations performed in 1970.…”

“…Immunosuppression and graft function monitoring was not well established and a moratorium was placed on heart transplantation with only 10 heart transplantations performed in 1970. 2 Only four centers in the world continued transplantation, two in the US (Stanford, CA and Medical College of Virginia, VA), one in Cape Town South Africa and one in La Pitie Salpetrieri, Paris, France. 2 Dr Shumway at Stanford and Dr Lower at Medical College of Virginia continued refining the heterotopic heart transplantation in animal models with particular focus on immunosuppression and monitoring for signs of rejection.…”

“…2 Only four centers in the world continued transplantation, two in the US (Stanford, CA and Medical College of Virginia, VA), one in Cape Town South Africa and one in La Pitie Salpetrieri, Paris, France. 2 Dr Shumway at Stanford and Dr Lower at Medical College of Virginia continued refining the heterotopic heart transplantation in animal models with particular focus on immunosuppression and monitoring for signs of rejection. They reported long-term survival of canine heterotopic heart transplantation following a biatrial anastomosis technique and the use of steroids/azathioprine to treat graft rejection.…”