The transplant recipient who lived the longest after his heart transplant died this week. His story gives hope to all patients in the same case.
It is a world record, and a hope for all heart transplant recipients. John McCafferty, the man who lived the longest after a heart transplant, died on Tuesday in England. He was 73 years old, and survived thirty-three after his operation.
In 1982, the bad news had fallen like a chopper for this quiet man from Scotland. When he was only 39, doctors had indeed diagnosed him with dilated cardiomyopathy.
This pathology corresponds to a dilation of the ventricles which limits the capacity of the heart to ensure its pump function. The consequences can be very serious, often giving rise to a situation of heart failure and increasing the risk of sudden death.
33 years of life after the transplant
John McCafferty was able to quickly benefit from a transplant, performed by Prof. Sir Magdi Yacoub, at Harefield hospital in London. The first ever successful heart transplant had taken place more than a decade before, in 1967, in South Africa. Despite this success, repeated many times, healthcare professionals were unable to tell patients an accurate prognosis. For John McCafferty, the medical team had given him no more than five years to live.
More than thirty years after his transplant, in 2013, he proved them the opposite, by making a sensational entry in the Book of Records. It has indeed been listed as the longest lived heart transplant.
With his wife, Ann, he has not stopped traveling the country to meet students, patients and associations to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation, and the fact that such a gesture could save lives. lives.
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