who performed the first open heart surgery in america
Daniel Hale Williams Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856[1] â€“ August 4, 1931) was an African-American general surgeon, who in 1893 performed the first documented, successful pericardium surgery in the United States to repair a wound.[2][3][4][5] He founded Chicago's Provident Hospital, the first non-segregated hospital in the United States, and also founded an associated nursing school for African Americans.
Heart transplantation Not having a human donor heart available, James D. Hardy of the University of Mississippi Medical Center transplanted the heart of a chimpanzee into the chest of a dying Boyd Rush in the early morning of Jan. 24, 1964. Hardy used a defibrillator to shock the heart to restart beating. This heart did beat in Rush's chest for 60 to 90 minutes (sources vary), and then Rush died without regaining consciousness.[5][6][7] Although Hardy was a respected surgeon who had performed the world's first human-to-human lung transplant a year earlier,[8][9] author Donald McRae states that Hardy could feel the "icy disdain" from fellow surgeons at the Sixth International Transplantation Conference several weeks after this attempt with the chimpanzee heart.[10] Hardy had been inspired by the limited success of Keith Reemtsma at Tulane University in transplanting chimpanzee kidneys into human patients with kidney failure.[11] The consent form Hardy asked Rush's step sister to sign did not include the possibility that a chimpanzee heart might be used, although Hardy stated that he did include this in verbal discussions.[6][11][12]