In 1965, a brilliant South African surgeon, Christiaan Barnard, a contemporary of our Head, Dr. N. Gopinath, came down. He was already famous for inventing the ‘Cape Town Lenticular Prosthesis’, a prosthetic heart valve. We were all agog because he was bringing some valves and we’d get to see the action live.
All preparations were underway for this landmark valve replacement procedure in our own OTs with a ringside view for us. In those days, there was no central oxygen system. We had cylinders (the kinds people were sadly giving an arm for during the COVID Delta wave) that were linked up to a bubble oxynator. The way it worked was that oxygen would flow from the cylinder into the oxynator, into which the patient’s blood would also flow in. This oxygenated blood would then get pumped back into the patient, providing the needed oxygen levels.
That day, as the great man was scrubbing, the patient was wheeled in and put on the bypass machine. His blood started flowing into the oxynator, but his oxygen levels started dipping. In the panic, some bright soul discovered that the over-excited technician had forgotten to hook up the cylinder to the oxynator, so the patient was bleeding away, but there was no oxygen supply and hence no oxygen was pumped back! The surgery was summarily called off, and the anti-climax was shattering.
That same day, there was a rumor that the Health Minister would be questioned in Parliament for ‘a surgeon from an apartheid country’ being hosted in India. As you know, India had no diplomatic relations with South Africa then owing to the apartheid regime. In the dead of the night, Dr. Gopinath was instructed to drive Dr. Barnard to the airport, from where he was whisked back before more damage happened! Clearly, a misadventure of a visit…
But, very different from the time when he came back in 1975, after having performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplants. He was then a state guest, feted and felicitated and given the rare AIIMS Fellowship.
How times change….

As told to Priya Sarkar (wife)