Christiaan barnard biography summary of 100 years

Christiaan Neethling Barnard 8 November — 2 September was a South African cardiac surgeon who performed the world's first human-to-human heart transplant operation. His technique saved the lives of ten babies in Cape Town and was adopted by surgeons in Britain and the United States.

Christiaan barnard family

He retired as head of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery in Cape Town in after rheumatoid arthritis in his hands ended his surgical career. He became interested in anti-aging research, and in his reputation suffered when he promoted Glycel , an expensive "anti-aging" skin cream, whose approval was withdrawn by the United States Food and Drug Administration soon thereafter.

During his remaining years, he established the Christiaan Barnard Foundation , dedicated to helping underprivileged children throughout the world. He died in at the age of 78 after an asthma attack. The family also experienced the loss of a daughter who was stillborn and who had been the fraternal twin of Barnard's older brother Johannes, who was twelve years older than Christiaan.

His father served as a missionary to mixed-race people. His mother, the former Maria Elisabeth de Swart, instilled in the surviving brothers the belief that they could do anything they set their minds to. Barnard did his internship and residency at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, after which he worked as a general practitioner in Ceres , a rural town in the Cape Province.

In the same year he obtained a doctorate in medicine MD from the same university for a dissertation titled "The treatment of tuberculous meningitis".

Christiaan barnard early life

Soon after qualifying as a doctor, Barnard performed experiments on dogs while investigating intestinal atresia , congenital, life-threatening obstructions in the intestines. He followed a medical hunch that this was caused by inadequate blood flow to the fetus. After nine months and forty-three attempts, Barnard was able to reproduce this condition in a fetus puppy by tying off some of the blood supply to a puppy's intestines and then placing the animal back in the womb, after which it was born some two weeks later, with the condition of intestinal atresia.

He was also able to cure the condition by removing the piece of intestine with inadequate blood supply.