The First Heart Transplant
My niece is an acute heart care clinical nurse specialist at the Oklahoma Heart Institute, working directly with Dr. Kamran Muhammad. In November 2022, OHI celebrated its 1,000th TAVR procedure.
The TAVR procedure is an option when open heart surgery won’t work. Dr. Muhammad, the director of the Structural Heart Disease Program at OHI performed the first transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). This minimally invasive approach (placing a valve in the heart’s valve) reduces the risk of surgical complications and allows patients to recover more quickly than traditional surgeries. Georgianne’s mother-in-law recently had the TAVR instead of open heart surgery. Quick recovery. She’s doing great!
Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the 44-year-old son of a minister, and a team of 30 associates performed the first human heart transplant at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Capetown, South Africa in 1967. It made world-wide headlines and now, all these years later, heart transplants and other forms of intervention have become common place! And many people can extend their lives for decades because of this amazing operation.
A dear friend of mine waited for nearly six months for a heart transplant. Being accepted for a heart transplant meant that her heart had failed and her life was threatened. Thank God, two years later after transplant, she is alive and well.
While Dr. Barnard performed the first transplant on the human body and Dr. Muhammed successfully performed the first TAVR, the Lord performed the first most important heart transplant over 2000 years ago!
Because of Jesus, billions of people have received divine heart transplants that allows us to live forever! Everyone has a heart condition. Jesus is still the only One who can take our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh. And with our new heart, we gain eternal life.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
Jesus is the Life! And we have a new heart that gives us an abundant life now and an even greater life forevermore.
King David had a heart condition. After he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed (Uriah, an elite, loyal soldier in David’s army), David prayed in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
Perhaps, like me and others, you realize that you too are plagued with a flawed heart. You may be in need of a spiritual heart transplant.
In every case, to receive a heart transplant, someone has to die. Someone DID die for us. His name is Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. That whoever believes in Him, will not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
We don’t have to wait for this clean heart because Jesus died to give us a new heart. The only thing that He requires of us is that we receive it and take care of it by walking in God’s ways, serving Him wholly!
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” Ezekiel 36:26, 27