Sheba’s Heart Transplant Unit Celebrates 26 years of success

50 years ago, on December 3rd 1967, the world held its breath as the first heart transplant surgery was performed in South Africa. Though the recipient only survived 18 days after the surgery was completed it was the advent of a new and exciting era of medicine.  

Years of research into the causes of heart transplant rejection has yielded many advances in the field of organ donation.

Since 1967, hundreds of lives have been saved, a medical feat that could not have been accomplished without the collaboration of the heart donor families.

Sheba’s Heart Transplant Unit was founded in 1991, and is currently the largest and most active transplant unit in Israel, responsible for three hundred transplants since its opening. Sheba also boasts an excellent multidisciplinary team which includes cardiac-surgeons, cardiologists, nurses, psychologists and social workers. The team is on call 365 days a year to ensure that heart transplant candidates are provided for in every way as well as to ease the ramifications of a long waiting period.

The unit has been working tirelessly to create measures which would speed up the transplant process while at the same time, guaranteeing the candidate’s quality of life.

“In recent years, many of the heart transplant candidates at Sheba have undergone a small artificial heart transplant that allows them to wait safely until the day they find their long-awaited heart donation.”

Dr. Yakov Lavee

Director of the Heart Transplant Unit and Assistant Director of the Cardiac Surgery Unit