1967: America’s First Heart

Transplant Performed

On December 6, 1967, Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in America, and the second in the world, at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. The patient, a two-week-old baby boy, lived for only six-and-a-half hours after surgery. Three days earlier, Dr. Christiaan Barnard had performed the world’s first heart transplant in Cape Town, South Africa. Maimonides Hospital was also the site of the implantation of the first commercial pacemaker and the first intra-aortic balloon pump, both in 1970. Kantrowitz invented a plastic heart valve, a heart-lung machine, an internal pacemaker, and a heart assist device that can be turned on and off – the result of 30 years of research. Cynthia Blair