Surgeons here [Cape Town] to-day [December 3] successfully carried out the world’s first human heart transplant — putting the heart of a young girl into a 55-year-old man. The heart was taken last night from the girl who had just been killed in a car crash. In a five-hour operation early this morning at Groote Schuur Hospital here, it was transplanted into the male patient, who is now fully conscious and “satisfactory”, a hospital statement said. The doctors worked for five hours to carry out the revolutionary operation – the target towards which several of the world’s leading surgeons have been working for many years. The surgeons here had been looking for a suitable heart for the male patient for about four weeks, since he was admitted to the hospital.
