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On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the first successful human lung transplant performed by Hardy et al., it seems prudent to review the preliminary research, the operative procedure, and the outcome of this significant operation. I have also attempted to establish the primacy of this operation for James Daniel Hardy.
ON juNE 11, 1963, the first successful human lung transplant was performed by James D. Hardy and associates at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. As a member of this team, I am uniquely positioned to review the research prior to surgery and the performance of this procedure, which has become a landmark in American surgery. As we observe the 40th anniversary of this seminal event, it is an appropriate time for review and reiteration.
After extensive animal research extending over a 6-year period, Hardy felt that the time was ripe for human lung transplantation. In his 1962 address to the Southern Surgical Association, he defined the necessary criteria for this undertaking. "It is only in such otherwise hopeless cases that cautious attempts to achieve permanent survival of homologous lung transplants is morally justified at the present time. But in the future, when the homograft rejection reaction can be controlled, lung homotransplantation may constitute a therapeutic weapon of significant potential in a wide variety of broncho-parenchymal and vascular diseases of the lung."1
Hardy's research continued, and he presented his findings at the American Association for Thoracic Surgery meeting on April 9, 1963. he stated that "the principal objectives of the dog lab research have been a) to evaluate the functional capacity of an immediately reimplan ted lung; b) to assess the quality and duration of function of an unmodified lung homograft; c) to determine the effect of periods of cold storage upon the...