How Did Dr. Christiaan Barnard's Life Changed?

On December 3, 1967, medicine was changed forever. On that day, Dr. Christiaan Barnard and a team of twenty surgeons revolutionized the way we treat infirmities such as cancer, heart failure, and cardiomyopathy. Every year, five thousand people worldwide undergo a heart transplant. Without Dr. Barnard, it’s very possible they would all be dead. Dr. Christiaan Barnard’s discovery not only saved thousands of lives, but inspired other doctors and researchers around the world to conduct similar studies. Barnard is originally from South Africa, but did work in many other countries, including the United States. He earned his medical degree from University of Cape Town in 1953, which at the time was one of the best universities in South Africa.
He received an immense amount of media attention and on the day of the transplan hundreds of cars were lined up in the hospital parking lot on the nights of December 2nd and 3rd to see Louis Washkansky receive a new heart. Louis Washkansky was a South African grocer with coronary insufficiency. Coronary insufficiency is the lack of blood flow through the coronary arteries and without the transplant, he would die. Although he knew the risk of fatality with the transplant, Louis knew he would die without it. Christiaan Barnard once said, “For a dying man it is not a difficult decision to agree to become the first heart transplant...because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have the chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept the odds if there were no such lion.” In the quote, the lion refers to the heart disease, and the crocodiles refer to the
Denise Darvall’s heart was put on a pump-oxygenator. The pump-oxygenator allowed Dr. Barnard to transplant a heart that was still able to function successfully. It also made the operation easier because the heart didn’t move since it wasn’t beating. Without the invention of the pump-oxygenator a few years before the surgery, the way Dr. Barnard performed it would have been very different. That’s why we thank John Gibbon, the inventor of the pump-oxygenator for his contribution to the surgery. When Christiaan Barnard took out the diseased heart and saw an empty chest cavity, he was shocked as to how large it was. It took twenty surgeons to complete the operation and was performed over the span of two days. The surgery was fantastic and everything went according to plan. Early on the morning of December 3, 1967, the operation was