First Heart Transplant
The first heart transplant was carried out by Christiaan Barnard in South Africa on December 3rd 1967. He transplanted the heart of a road traffic accident victim into 59 year-old Louis Washansky during a nine-hour operation. Although the transplant was a success, Washkansky died 18 days later after contracting pneumonia because the drugs he was taking to stop his body from rejecting the heart had reduced his ability to fight infection.

Barnard had successfully carried out a kidney transplant in 1959 and several heart transplants on animals before his first human heart transplant. In this photo, he is seen operating on a dog. Heart transplants are now more common, with thousands carried out every year usually on patients suffering from heart failure or severe coronary artery disease.