Question 1

True or false: The first human heart transplant was performed in South Africa in 1967.

Accepted Answer

True. Dr. Christiaan Barnard led the historic surgery at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town on December 3, 1967.

Question 2

True or false: The first heart transplant recipient was a 54-year-old man with end-stage heart disease.

Accepted Answer

False. Louis Washkansky was 53, not 54, and suffered from diabetes and heart failure, but age is often misremembered.

Question 3

True or false: The first heart transplant was funded entirely by the South African government.

Accepted Answer

False. The surgery was largely funded by private donations and the hospital’s own resources, not the government.

Question 4

True or false: The donor heart for the first transplant was kept viable using a simple ice-cooled saline solution.

Accepted Answer

True. No sophisticated preservation technology existed; the heart was cooled and rushed to the operating room in a bowl.

Question 5

True or false: The recipient of the first heart transplant lived for over a year after surgery.

Accepted Answer

False. Louis Washkansky survived only 18 days, dying from pneumonia caused by immunosuppressive drugs.

Question 6

True or false: The first heart transplant recipient received a heart from a brain-dead donor.

Accepted Answer

True. The donor, Denise Darvall, was declared brain-dead after a car accident, a novel concept at the time.

Question 7

True or false: Christiaan Barnard was the first surgeon to ever attempt a heart transplant on a human.

Accepted Answer

False. Dr. James Hardy performed the first human heart transplant attempt in 1964 using a chimpanzee heart, but the patient died quickly.

Question 8

True or false: The first heart transplant surgery took less than five hours to complete.

Accepted Answer

True. Barnard’s team completed the procedure in about 4.5 hours, remarkably fast for such a complex surgery.

First heart transplant Trivia Questions