First heart transplant in Brazil carried out 50 years ago

The country was one of the first to perform the procedure

Published on 25/05/2018 - 18:00 By Agência Brasil - Brasília

Fifty years ago, in 1968, a field worker from Mato Grosso do Sul state known as “João Boiadeiro” made history by becoming the first Brazilian citizen to have his heart transplanted. The surgery, carried out at the Medical School Hospital at the University of São Paulo (FMUSP), marked the beginning of a new phase in Brazilian and Latin-American cardiology.

João Boiadeiro’s transplant occurred just six months after the world’s first, conducted in December, 1967, by a team in South Africa led by Dr. Christiaan Barnard. João Boiadeiro’s procedure, on May 26, 1968, brought Brazil to the group of pioneering countries in heart transplants.

Progress

Dr. Roberto Kalil Filho, head of the São Paulo Heart Institute (Incor), a byword for cardiology in Latin America, said that among the biggest achievements in the surgery is the evolution of medicines that prevent rejection.

After the initial phase, “anti-rejection medications became more efficient and had fewer collateral effects—not to mention more efficient machinery for cardiac  support, with modern portable artificial ventricles, which add over five years to the lives of patients waiting for an organ, or patients who cannot undergo a transplant,” Kalil said.

Today, in Brazil, efforts are being made in a partnership between the government and the private enterprise to reduce the time between the extraction of the donor organ and its implant to four hours, maintaining the complex logistics, with ambulances, charter flights, and helicopters.

At Incor, a cooler is used to preserve the temperature of the donor heart in ideal conditions (8°C–10°C), with no ice. This technology is also used in Europe.

Translation: Fabrício Ferreira -  Edition: Graça Adjuto/Augusto Queiroz

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