CARDIOLOGY
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Our team of physicians, nurses and health professionals provide comprehensive cardiovascular care and offer the most advanced treatments available, ranging from preventing heart disease progression by lifestyle modification and medical therapy, to catheter-based coronary, peripheral and valvular interventions, arrhythmia ablation, implantable devices, minimally invasive and open-heart surgery and heart transplantation.
It is of utmost interest to note that Christiaan Neethling Barnard (8 November 1922 – 2 September 2001) was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant on December 3, 1967, and the second overall heart transplant (James Hardy did a xenotransplant in 1964).
Growing up in Beaufort West, Cape Province, he studied medicine and practised for several years in South Africa, his native country.
As a young doctor experimenting on dogs, Barnard developed a remedy for the infant defect of intestinal atresia. His technique saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted by surgeons in Britain and the United States.
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In 1955, he travelled to the United States and was initially assigned further gastrointestinal work by Owen Wangensteen.
Vince Gott introduced him to the heart-lung machine, and Barnard was allowed to transfer to the service run by open heart surgery pioneer Walt Lillehei.
Upon returning to South Africa in 1958, Barnard was appointed head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town.
On 3 December 1967, Barnard transplanted a heart from a person who had just died from a head injury, with full permission of the donor's family, into the chest of a 54-year-old Louis Washkansky.
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Washkansky regained full consciousness and lived for eighteen days, even spending time with his wife, before he died of pneumonia, with the reduction of his immune system by the anti-rejection drugs being a major contributing factor.
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Barnard did state to Mr. and Mrs. Washkansky that the operation had an 80% chance of success, a claim which has been criticised as misleading.
Barnard's second transplant patient Philip Blaiberg, with the operation performed at the beginning of 1968, lived for nineteen months and was able to go home from the hospital.
Through collaboration with other specialists, our partner team achieves exceptional quality of care, excellent treatment outcomes, and improved quality of life for our patients.
The Network of specialised cardiologists we have access to diagnose, treat and manage common and rare heart conditions including, but not restricted to:
