Question

First human heart transplant operation conducted by Dr. Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky, was conducted in

• A. 1967
• B. 1968
• C. 1958
• D. 1922

Hint:

The first successful human heart transplant marked a significant advancement in medical science, performed in 1967.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is A

This is a direct historical fact question, so the fastest approach is to check each year against what we know about transplant medicine's timeline.

1. 1967: Correct - this is the year Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the world's first human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky.
2. 1968: Too late - by this point the first transplant had already been performed and Barnard had moved on to his second patient.
3. 1958: Too early - immunosuppression and heart-lung bypass techniques were not yet developed for such a procedure.
4. 1922: Far too early - cardiac surgery of this complexity was not possible before the mid-20th century.

So the correct answer is 1967.

Answer 2

Another way to confirm the year is to anchor it against other well-known facts from the same period, since the options themselves offer some useful clues.

1. 1967: This is the year most consistently linked in medical history timelines with Barnard's operation - it is the figure cited in virtually every account of the surgery.
2. 1968: If the transplant had happened in 1968, Washkansky's well-documented death shortly after the surgery (in December 1967) would have had to happen before the operation itself, which is a contradiction.
3. 1958: Barnard had not even completed his advanced surgical training and specialization in cardiothoracic techniques until the early 1960s, so he could not have performed this operation as early as 1958.
4. 1922: This date actually corresponds closely to Dr. Barnard's own birth year (he was born in 1922), which is likely why it appears as a tempting distractor here - but a surgeon obviously cannot perform an operation before he is even trained, so this is a trap answer rather than the real date of the surgery.

Cross-checking against the surrounding timeline confirms the same year.

Hence, the correct answer is 1967.