8543RB Reading for Me Level 6 Part A

Factual
Getting to the Heart of It
There are many marvellous things our bodies can do. We can repair torn and broken skin,
rejuvenate our intestinal tracts every 3–4 days and we even grow a new skeleton every
8–10 years! Yet, one of the things our bodies can’t do is grow new organs once they are
damaged. This is where advancements in modern medicine have led the way.
On 3 December 1967, a courageous South African surgeon by the name of Christiaan
Barnard performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant. The recipient he
gave the heart to was gravely ill. Without the transplant, he was not going to survive.
Dr Barnard was a skilled surgeon who had previous experience with a kidney transplant,
but this was the first time anyone had managed to effectively perform a heart transplant.
As a young boy, Dr Barnard had a brother who sadly died from heart disease when he was
only five years old. This influenced both him and another of his brothers, Marius, to become
doctors. Remarkably, it was Marius who assisted Dr Barnard in the ground-breaking surgery
by operating on the donor to retrieve the heart whilst Barnard prepared the patient to
receive it.
Christiaan Barnard paved the way for heart transplants to become a treatment option for
critically ill patients. To this day, this first heart transplant remains the most publicised
medical event in history and has provided modern-day medicine with both the skills and
knowledge to develop further treatments in transplant care.
Retrato del Dr. Christiaan Barnard by Benito Prieto Coussent, licence CC BY-SA 3.0 ES
86 Reading for Me Level 6 (Part A) 978-1-922843-65-4 R.I.C. Publications ® Prim-Ed Publishing