The first heart transplant recipients survived only a span of eighteen days fate r the operation was completed. Many problems contributed to this short survival it me. There were problems in the surgical procedure. Infection often occurred after surgery an d there were no effective medications to help prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. Many patients were dying soon after, the number of heart transplants increasingly dropped. The first animal transplant is credited to be Vladimir Demijohn. While working
Moscow, Vladimir experimented and switched the hearts of two dogs. The do gas survived. Also in 1 984, in Loam Linda, California, Leonard Bailey, MD, implanted a baboon h earth into a daylong girl who became known as Baby Fee. She survived for twenty days a s the most famous recipient of a crosspiece heart transplant. Throughout the decade of the 1 9805 and into the ass, physicians continue to refine techniques for balancing dosages of medications to protect the new heart fro m infection and becoming rejected.
Today’s surgical techniques and procedures are more ad Vance. The creation of newer and better medication that protects hearts from infection, and the u SE of heart surveillance to identify rejection have resulted in better survival rates. Dry. Bernard and his surgical team performing the world’s first heart transplant t on 55 year old, Louis Washbasins. Dry. Bernard successfully transplanted a heart from a deceased young woman to Louis Washbasins, who was suffering from heart damage, in December.