Transplant Timeline – Heart/Lung

1955: First Heart Valve Transplants: Dr. Gordon Murray of Toronto, Ontario, uses the main aortic valve of a male automobile accident victim to perform the world's first heart valve transplant on a patient with a severely leaking aortic valve. The transplanted valve functioned well for over eight years.

1963: First Lung Transplant: Dr. James D. Hardy of the University of Mississippi in Jackson, performs the first single human lung transplant, but the patient dies within days.

1964: Xenotransplant – First Heart Transplant of Non-Human Primate into Human: Dr. James D. Hardy, of the University of Mississippi in Jackson, uses the heart of a chimp named Bino to transplant into 68-year-old Boyd Rush. The heart is too small to maintain independent circulation and functions for only 90 minutes.

1967: First Successful Heart Transplant: Dr. Christiaan Barnard, at Groote Schur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, transplants the heart of an 18-year-old female car accident victim into Louis Washkansky. He dies 18 days later of pneumonia.

1968: Xenotransplant – First Attempted Pig Heart Transplant: Dr. Ross of the National Heart Hospital in London, England, attempts the transplant of a pig heart into a patient, but the heart ceases functioning in minutes.

1969: First Artificial Heart Implant: Dr. Denton A. Cooley implants the first total artificial heart (the Liotta Total Artificial Heart) at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. The heart is implanted into 47-year-old Haskell Karp and is not intended to be permanent. It is used as a bridge until he can receive a donor heart, which he does 64 hours later.

March 9, 1981: First Successful Heart-Lung Transplant: Dr. Bruce Reitz of Stanford University in California, performs the first successful heart-double lung transplant on 45-year-old Mary D. Golke, who had been diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension. Cyclosporine is experimentally used to combat rejection. Golke passed away in May 1986. Golke co-authored a book about her experiences, called I'll Take Tomorrow.

1982: First Permanent Artificial Heart: Dr. William C. DeVries of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, implants the Jarvik 7 artificial heart into Barney Clark, a 61-year-old retired dentist. Clark is forced to remain inactive because the heart is kept beating by an external compressor attached to the implant by hoses. Clark lives 112 days.

1983: First Successful Single Lung Transplant: Dr. Joel Cooper of the Toronto Lung Transplant Group, Toronto General Hospital (now part of the University Health Network), performs a single lung transplant on 58-year-old Tom Hall, who suffers from pulmonary fibrosis. Hall lives for more than six years before dying of kidney failure.

1984: First Heart-Liver Transplant: The first heart-liver transplant is performed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania.

1986: First Successful Double Lung Transplant: Dr. Joel Cooper of the Toronto Lung Transplant Group, Toronto General Hospital (now part of the University Health Network), performs a double lung transplant on Ann Harrison, who suffers from emphysema. Harrison lives until 2001, when she dies of a brain aneurysm.

1989: First Combination Heart, Liver, and Kidney Transplant: Surgeons at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, transplant a heart, liver, and kidney into a 26-year-old woman. She survives for four months.

1990: First Successful Living-Related Lung Transplant: Dr. Vaughn A. Starnes, at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, transplants the lobe of one lung into a 12-year-old girl (the lobe was donated by her mother).

2008: First Tissue-Engineered Airway Transplant: In June 2008, at the Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Professor Paolo Macchiarini of the University of Barcelona performed the first tissue-engineered airway transplant, using a seven-centimeter tracheal segment donated by a 51-year-old who had died of cerebral hemorrhage and the recipient's own stem cells to replace the recipient's lower trachea and left bronchus. The recipient, 30-year-old Claudia Castillo, had end-stage bronchomalacia. Getting to the point of transplantation involved the work of a pan-European team from the universities of Barcelona, Bristol, Padua, and Milan. As explained in a news release from the University of Bristol, "Stem cells were obtained from the recipient's own bone marrow, grown into a large population in Professor Martin Birchall's lab at the University of Bristol, and matured into cartilage cells (chondrocytes) using an adapted method originally devised for treating osteoarthritis by Professor Anthony Hollander at the University of Bristol. The donor trachea was then seeded with chondrocytes on the outside, using a novel bioreactor which incubates cells, developed at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, allowing them to migrate into the tissue under conditions ideal for each individual cell type. In order to replicate the lining of the trachea, epithelial cells were seeded onto the inside of the trachea using the same bioreactor. Four days after seeding, the graft was used to replace the patient's left main bronchus." Four days after transplantation, the graft was almost indistinguishable from adjacent normal bronchi. After one month, a biopsy elicited local bleeding, indicating that the blood vessels had successfully grown back. As of November 19, 2008, the news release reported of Castillo, "She has remained well since and has a normal quality of life. She is able to care for her children, walk up two flights of stairs and occasionally go out dancing in the evenings." For more information, see the article published online on November 19, 2008, in The Lancet.