The heart was a major prize for transplant surgeons. But, as well as rejection issues the heart deteriorates within minutes of death so any operation would have to be performed at great speed. The development of the heart-lung machine was also needed. Lung pioneer James Hardy attempted a human heart transplant in 1964, but a premature failure of the recipient's heart caught Hardy with no human donor, he used a chimpanzee heart which failed very quickly. The first success was achieved in December 1967 by Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, Louis Washkansky survived for eighteen days amid what many saw as a distasteful publicity circus. The media interest prompted a spate of heart transplants. Over a hundred were performed in 1968-69, but almost all the patients died within sixty days. As mentioned, it was the advent of cyclosporine that altered transplants from research surgery to live-saving treatment. In 1968 surgical pioneer Denton Cooley performed seventeen transplants including the first heart-lung transplant. Fourteen of his patients were dead within six months. By 1984 two-thirds of all heart transplant patients survived for five years or more. With organ transplants becoming commonplace, limited only by donors, surgeons moved onto more risky fields, multiple organ transplants on humans and whole-body transplant research on animals. On March 9th 1981 the first successful heart-lung transplant took place at Stanford University Hospital (USA). The head surgeon, Bruce Reitz, credited the patient's recovery to cyclosporine-A.

Dr Christiaan Barnard did the first succsesful one in 1967 in south Africa. Interestingly, I remember the papers reprting that he and his brother had made a pact that they would never allow it to be done to either of them....

G'day Wicked Willie, Thank you for your question. It was Dr Christiaan Barnard on 3 December 1967 in South Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard Regards