A little over 50 years ago, heart transplants began to be performed in Brazil.
Many changes have taken place in these more than five decades, as medicine has evolved, as have surgical and post-operative methods and also the use and choice of drugs to treat rejection.
In a country where heart transplants are the third most common, the evolution of the procedure, as well as of cardiology, is essential for treating diseases and malformations in people of all ages.
In this article we'll talk about the history and evolution of heart transplantation in Brazil over the years. Read on!
Learn about the evolution of heart transplantation
The history of heart transplants in Brazil began on May 26, 1968, and although it may seem recent, it was less than six months after the first procedure of its kind in the world.
See how this highly complex surgery, which has saved thousands of lives, has evolved:
The world's first heart transplant
The first heart transplant in the world was performed by South African Christian Barnard.
Precisely in Cape Town, South Africa, the surgeon performed the complex operation based on his knowledge acquired from performing various transplants on animals.
Unfortunately, 18 days after the procedure, the patient died not because of the organ, as some people would have thought, but because of an infection resulting from the rejection of the organ.
The first heart transplant in Brazil
A few months later, the first heart transplant was performed in Brazil by surgeon Euryclides de Jesus Zerbini and his team at the Hospital das Clínicas of the University of São Paulo Medical School.
However, just as in the case of Barnard's surgery, Zerbini's patient died in less than a month from the same cause: rejection.
This caused the whole country to stop performing this type of surgery until 1980 and kept both cardiologists and surgeons afraid that instead of saving people, they would harm them.
Even the rejection of transplanted organs is still a challenge today, but according to new drugs and rapid action by specialists, 72% of patients live more than 5 years after the procedure.
The emergence of cyclosporine
It was only in 1980 that heart transplants began to be performed here again.
This was because the drug cyclosporine appeared, an important immunosuppressant that is responsible for combating organ rejection.
With the resumption of these surgeries, other drugs began to appear, and the number of premature deaths, as well as post-transplant infections, decreased.
Preserving the heart
Another major milestone in the evolution of heart transplantation in Brazil is the preservation of the organ.
In previous decades, the heart had to be removed at the same time as it was donated to the recipient.
In addition to the extreme speed required to carry out such complex tasks, a small delay could make the procedure unfeasible.
Today, even though it is still a short time, the heart can remain outside the body for up to 4 hours, allowing it to travel from one hospital to another, for example.
Artificial hearts
As progress was made in heart transplantation, the use of artificial hearts also began to emerge.
This state-of-the-art equipment is widely used in patients waiting in the queue, which currently numbers more than 29,078 people in need of various organs.
Generally speaking, those waiting for a heart have serious injuries or heart diseases with no cure that could lead to their imminent death.
In this way, these patients are able to wait for surgery with fewer risks, reducing the statistics of those who die without it.
The history and evolution of heart transplantation is very impressive, isn't it? Keep browsing our blog and check out the other interesting content we've created.
