Biography
He studied medicine in Cape Town, where he also received his doctorate and completed his residency. He received specialist surgical training at the University of Minnesota in the USA. In 1948 he married Aletta Gertruida Louw and the couple had a daughter and a son. He performed his first heart operation in Minnesota, but in 1958 he returned to Cape Town. There he initially worked as a general practitioner before becoming a surgical assistant at the Medical School at the University of Cape Town. In the same year he performed the first open heart operation at the Groote Schuur Hospital. He became director of the surgical research department at the University of Cape Town and was appointed professor of thoracic surgery at the age of 40. However, he had already had around 1,000 heart operations. In addition, since 1963 he had been intensively involved in animal experiments with special surgical techniques, such as special vascular suturing techniques and the effects of medication.
On December 3, 1967, Prof. Barnard led the 31-member transplant team that achieved the first human heart transplant. The heart of Denise Darvall, who died in a car accident at the age of 25, was transplanted into the patient, Louis Washkansky, in a five-hour operation at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town. The operation was successful in that Washkansky survived it. To prevent his body from rejecting the foreign organ, Washkansky's immune powers were largely disabled. After 18 days he died of pneumonia as a result of an infection. The second patient, Dr. Philip Blaiberg, underwent surgery on January 2, 1968 and lived with the transplanted heart for 19 months. Nevertheless, transplant medicine did not initially catch on. It only experienced an upswing around 1980, when the active ingredient cyclosporine was used to suppress the rejection of foreign organs. Even after the first heart transplant, Barnard made a name for himself with further spectacular operations.
In 1971, he simultaneously transplanted a heart and both lungs into a patient. In 1974, he transplanted a donor heart without first removing the diseased organ. Both patients died not long after surgery. After the divorce in 1970, he married Barbara Maria Zoellner and the couple had two sons. The marriage ended in divorce in 1982. In 1983 Barnard had to give up his practice as a surgeon because he suffered from severe arthritis. He dedicated himself to heart disease children with the "Christian Barnard Foundation", ran a clinic on the Greek island of Kos and worked as a scientist in Oklahoma on aging problems. He has published numerous non-fiction books such as the guide "50 Ways to a Healthy Heart". In 1988, Karin Setzkorn became his third wife, with whom he had a daughter and a son. This marriage also ended in divorce in 2000.
Christiaan Neethling Barnard died on September 2, 2001 while on vacation in Cyprus at the age of 78.
