**Introduction**

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter: Dedicated Initial Giants Breaking**

**Introductory Chapter: Dedicated Initial Giants Breaking** 

*'Just before 6 a.m. on Sunday 3 December 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in CapeTown, a new heart* 

Despite previous studies and efforts in animal labs, this sentence represents the 'official' beginning of one of the most challenging scientific steps of the modern era, which has been the ability to replace functionally or anatomically the failing heart [1–5]. To understand the real need of such a radical therapy, as being now widely well-accepted, we have to face briefly with its 'recent' history since it was the dedicated initial giants of the field, who broke the

Between 1902 and 1909, in France, Dr. Carrel 'already' performed successful transplants of different organs in dogs. In 1938, a Russian biology student, Vladimir Demikhov 'already' tested an implantable total artificial heart (TAH) in a dog that survived for 2.5 hours. However, these

In 1964, Dr. DeBakey 'finally' convinced the United States of America (USA) National Institutes of Health to fund the development of a workable TAH [4, 5]. Thus, Baylor researchers in Houston began a series of calf experiments led by the Argentinian physician Domingo Liotta. However, the results were not encouraging and long-lasting. DeBakey decided that the TAH was not ready clinically for 'human being' and Houston MCS program shifted to the 'partial artificial heart,' which was defined as left ventricular assist device (LVAD). In 1966, DeBakey performed the first successful clinical implantation of a postcardiotomy LVAD [4, 5]. The 37-year-old woman patient was supported by the device for 10 days, gaining full myocardial

*in the chest of Dr. Louis Washkansky was electrically shocked into action'* [1–3].

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.79814

**the Barriers to Successful Cardiac Transplantation**

**the Barriers to Successful Cardiac Transplantation** 

**Therapy**

**Therapy**

Antonio Loforte

Antonio Loforte

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

barriers to successful cardiac transplantation therapy.

attempts resulted to be only strictly experimental [4, 5].

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.79814

**Provisional chapter**
