Dr Zbigniew Religa completes the first-ever heart transplant in Poland, 1987 - History
Dr Zbigniew Religa completes the first-ever heart transplant in Poland, 1987 - The surgery took 23 hours to complete. Dr Religa is looking at the vitals monitor, and at the right of the picture, you can see his assistant on the floor in the corner asleep due the procedure being so exhausting. The procedure was considered to be near impossible at the time, but they went ahead with it anyway against medical odds. The difficulty of the surgery can be seen with the mess and the number of tubes around the patient. The Polish health system at the time was considered to be one of the worst in Europe at the time so this was a massive achievement in medical history. The name of the patient was Tadeusz Żytkiewicz, who passed away 30 years later in 2017. He lived longer than Dr Religa, who died in 2009 due to lung cancer because he was a very heavy smoker. This picture has been voted to be 100 of the most important pictures in history by National Geographic. Żytkiewicz is seen ...