The world’s first heart transplant took place on December 3, 1967, in Cape Town, South Africa. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) conducted the operation; the patient lived for 18 days. Over the next two years, more than a hundred heart transplant operations were performed, but the survival rate was not encouraging. Surgeons have continued the practice with moderately improved results: While some heart recipients have lived as long as six years after the procedure, only 20 percent of the recipients survive more than one year.