http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010902/ts/health_barnard_death_dc_2.html

Heart Pioneer Christiaan Barnard Dies in Cyprus Photos

By Michele Kambas

NICOSIA, Cyprus (Reuters) - Pioneering South African heart surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who performed the world's first human heart transplant in 1967, died Sunday while on vacation in Cyprus, officials said.

Barnard, who was 78, died at a hotel in the western resort of Paphos. A doctor called in by the hotel certified his death, officials said.

``Dr. Christiaan Barnard died this morning... The causes of death are not known but the chances are that it was a heart attack or some such nature,'' Health Minister Frixos Savvides told Reuters.

A post mortem to establish the cause of death would take place possibly later Sunday, he said.

``It was not a violent death or an accident. No foul play is suspected,'' said Savvides.

Employees at the hotel where Barnard had been staying for the past three days said he suffered a suspected heart attack.

``He was taken to hospital by ambulance,'' an employee at the Paphos hotel said.

Barnard made medical history in December 1967 with the world's first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky. Washkansky, 53, lived for 18 more days before dying of pneumonia.

The operation made Barnard, son of a poor Christian missionary, an overnight celebrity.

He studied medicine at the University of Cape Town and at the University of Minnesota. In Minneapolis he switched from general surgery to cardiology and heart-lung surgery.

Before performing surgery on Washkansky in 1967, Barnard had spent many years experimenting with heart transplantation, operating mainly on dogs.

Washkansky, who had diabetes and incurable heart disease, had an 80 percent chance of surviving the operation at the time, or risk a certain death.

``For a dying man it is not a difficult decision because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would never accept such odds if there were no lion,'' Barnard later wrote.

Rheumatoid arthritis forced him to give up surgery in 1983. He had spent his last years touring the world giving lectures and dividing his time between Europe and his farm in South Africa's Cape Province.

He is survived by four children.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 2001