Boy lives with second heart

Press, 6 August 1983, Page 11

Boy lives with second heart

NZPA Johannesburg A boy of 16 has been alive for three days with two donor hearts after worldfirst surgery lasting nine hours earlier this week.

The young white South African is said to be in a satisfactory condition in the Groote Schuur Hospital at Cape Town. He is breathing normally, feeding himself, and has telephoned his mother. • He is the first person to live with two donor hearts. He received the first two years ago and the second, from an 11-year-old girl, during this week’s surgery when his own heart, which had collapsed, was removed.

The surgical team think it unlikely that complications will develop and the boy is expected to be able to lead a normal life.

The surgery was performed on Tuesday by Professor Dimitri Novitzky, a member of the cardiology unit headed by Dr Christiaan Barnard, who conducted the first heart transplant in 1967. Professor Novitzky and his team used a combination of two techniques, a radioactive scanner and an anti-rejection drug, which they said was “a complete revolution in transplantation.”

In the boy’s first transplant two years ago he received the heart of a Coloured man, aged 25. The surgery used the “piggyback” technique, which meant grafting the donor heart on to the boy’s own. Recently his own heart stopped beating and the donor heart needed extra help to keep the boy alive.