200 heart transplants at CTown hospital

The Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in Cape Town has completed its 200th heart transplant, it said on Wednesday.

Cardiac surgeon Dr Willie Koen, head of the hospital's transplant programme, said the recipient was a 30-year-old man.

The patient had been on the waiting list for a donor heart for over a year. During this time his condition deteriorated and he had to be admitted to the intensive care unit.

"It is of great significance that this particular transplant, which is the eighth heart transplant to be performed at the hospital this year, was on a young man who has his whole life ahead of him," Koen said.

"This will further improve the patient's chances of a long, healthy, and productive life."

The hospital's heart transplant programme began in 1995. The hospital's survival rate for transplant patients was above 95 percent after one year, 80 percent after five years, and 70 percent after 10 years.

"We as a team are honoured to be involved in heart transplants which are life saving and often the only treatment option left for people with serious heart disease."

The first heart transplant on an adult human was performed at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town in December 1967, by South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard.

 

 

(File photo: Gallo images)