The first successful human liver transplant was performed by Dr Thomas Starzl and his colleagues in 1968 in Colorado on an 18-month-old child who survived 400 days.
Despite improved technical aspects of transplant surgery, the 1-year survival rates were not above 35% in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly because of graft failure due to allograft rejection.
A major breakthrough in the field was the development of calcineurin inhibitors, with a landmark paper reporting 11 of 12 patients alive 1 year post-transplant on cyclosporine-based immunosuppresion.[1]
Kidney transplantation
The first kidney transplant in BC was performed in 1968. With the dramatic improvement in graft and patient survival, transplantation has become the treatment of choice for many patients with end-stage kidney disease.
However, significant challenges remain. Although immunosuppressive agents are effective, they have significant toxicity and individualized therapy is required to optimize function while limiting complications.
In December 1967 Christiaan Barnard performed the first human cardiac transplantation in Cape Town, South Africa. Louis Washkansky, a 55-year-old man, survived for 18 days before succumbing to pneumonia.
Since then cardiac transplantation has evolved to become a widely adopted therapeutic option for the treatment of end-stage heart failure. By 2007 over 80000 heart transplants were reported in the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplant (ISHLT) worldwide data registry.[1]
