In August 1979 the cardiac surgeon Terence English, who has died aged 93, was poised to carry out a heart transplant at Papworth hospital in Cambridgeshire. If it did not go to plan, the operation, as well as being a tragedy for the patient, would end his vision for a Papworth heart transplant programme. Reminiscing at Papworth 40 years later, he said: “I very much had my back to the wall. I had a shot and I was going to take it.”
A heart transplant is the only lifeline for people with end-stage heart failure, and being able to carry out such an operation successfully had long been a goal for cardiac surgeons. Christiaan Barnard in South Africa performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in 1967, and between 1968 and 1969 Donald Ross carried out three in the UK, but the longest a patient had survived was 107 days. It was thought to be a false dawn, and in 1973 the UK chief medical officer put a moratorium on the procedure.
