Tuesday-Wednesday, June 11-12, 1963: First lung transplant

     A 58-year-old man was reported doing well after undergoing what is believed to be the first lung transplant of its kind in medical history.
     A team of surgeons at the University Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi, replaced his cancerous left lung with a healthy lung from an unrelated donor in a three-hour operation.
     Names of both the donor and the recipient were withheld by medical authorities.
     A spokesman for the medical center said the Mississippi team of surgeons made detailed studies in more than 500 experimental animals over a period of seven years prior to attempting the transplant.
     Funds for the project were supplied by the office of the Army surgeon general.
-- United Press International

Notes: The lung recipient, John Richard Russell, lived for 18 days. It later emerged that he was a convicted murderer who was serving a life sentence at the state penitentiary at Parchman. (Gov. Ross Barnett commuted his sentence after the operation.)
     This post is dated June 11-12 based on the duration of the operation, as noted by lead surgeon Dr. James Hardy, linked below.

* "The First Lung Transplant in Man (1963) and the First Heart Transplant in Man (1964)" (Hardy, Transplantation Proceedings, 1999): @
* "Transplantation of the Lung" (Hardy et al, American Surgical Association, 1964): @
* "The First Lung Transplantation" (Dr. Martin L. Dalton, Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 1995): @
* Entry on Hardy from University of Mississippi Medical Center: @
* "Medical Center marks 50th anniversary of momentous surgical achievement" (from UMMC): @ 

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