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600% Improvement. In reviewing the causes of Blaiberg's death, Barnard noted last week that medical science has not yet learned to prevent rejection —only to control it, with varying degrees of success. And, he might have added, suppression of the immune reaction is always accompanied by the risk of exposing the transplant recipient to a fatal infection. Thus, in light of the record* and the current state of the art, are heart transplants really justified? Yes, said Barnard, citing figures to support his contention. He has performed five such operations, and his patients have survived a total of 1,101 days—or an average of 220 days. Other heart patients who were accepted for transplants in Cape Town and at Stanford, but who died because no donor became available, survived an average of only 30 days. "So," said Barnard, "we have an improvement of about 600%." There had been no doubt in Blaiberg's mind, as he had frequently testified in his newspaper column, that the added months of life had been deeply satisfying to him and had fully justified the rigors of surgery and hospitalization. The same has been true of virtually all, if not of all, long-term survivors.
Although Barnard declared that he would not slow down his transplant program, other surgical teams around the world were marking time last week, waiting for their medical colleagues to find improved ways to control the rejection phenomenon. They were watching other long-term survivors for clues. The new doyen, Pere Boulogne, 58, a Dominican priest who received his transplant in Paris on May 12, 1968, was carrying on most of his normal activities, working on a book and regularly celebrating Mass. He was being checked several times a week by his French doctors, who refused to divulge either the type or the dosage of immunosuppressive drugs being used to keep him alive.
*Of the 141 patients who have had 143 heart transplants (two have undergone two operations apiece), there were only 29 survivors last week.