Heart transplantation is the surgery that involves implantation, in an individual with a severe heart failure, of a healthy heart from a recently deceased donor.
Heart failure means that serious pathological condition in which a person's heart is irretrievably damaged and no longer "works" as it should ; in other words, it is difficult to pump blood into the circulation and to supply the various organs and tissues of the body with oxygen.
The main causes of heart failure are: coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathies, heart valve defects ( valvulopathies ) and congenital heart defects .
At the end of the 1960s, the heart transplant technique was designed by two American heart surgeons from Stanford University : Norman Shumway (1923-2006) and Richard Lower (1929-2008).
However, although they were the founders of the method, the merit of the first intervention on an adult individual belongs to another doctor, namely a South African heart surgeon named Christiaan Barnard .
The intervention of C. Barnard was held December 3, 1967 in Cape Town (South Africa), at the Groote Schuur Hospital, and took place according to the technique developed and perfected by N. Shumway and R. Lower.
After 3 days of this first historic intervention - exactly on 6 December 1967 in a New York hospital - another heart surgeon, Adrian Kantrowitz, carried out the first heart transplant in a child.
Norman Shumway, considered a true pioneer in the field of cardiac surgery, performed his first surgery on an adult on January 6, 1968, at Stanford University Hospital .
