TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Juro Wada, emeritus professor at Sapporo Medical University, who performed Japan's first heart transplant surgery in 1968, died of pneumonia Monday afternoon at his home in Tokyo, the college said Tuesday. He was 88.
Wada conducted the surgery at the university hospital on Aug. 8, 1968, in which the heart of a 21-year-old drowned college student was implanted into an 18-year-old man suffering cardiac valvular disease. The recipient died 83 days later on Oct. 29.
Wada faced an accusation of manslaughter over the brain-death diagnosis of the donor and the subsequent surgery, the 30th heart transplant in the world at the time, but prosecutors eventually dropped the case because of insufficient evidence.
Following the surgery, which prompted discussion on the ethical and technical issues of organ transplants, doctors who provided organs from brain-dead donors repeatedly faced criminal complaints, effectively halting such procedures in Japan until the 1997 enforcement of the Organ Transplant Law.
A Sapporo native, Wada graduated from the School of Medicine at Hokkaido University in 1944 and served as a professor at the Sapporo Medical University and the Tokyo Women's Medical University.
After retiring, he set up a heart and lung research institute.
(Mainichi Japan) February 15, 2011
Wada conducted the surgery at the university hospital on Aug. 8, 1968, in which the heart of a 21-year-old drowned college student was implanted into an 18-year-old man suffering cardiac valvular disease. The recipient died 83 days later on Oct. 29.
Wada faced an accusation of manslaughter over the brain-death diagnosis of the donor and the subsequent surgery, the 30th heart transplant in the world at the time, but prosecutors eventually dropped the case because of insufficient evidence.
Following the surgery, which prompted discussion on the ethical and technical issues of organ transplants, doctors who provided organs from brain-dead donors repeatedly faced criminal complaints, effectively halting such procedures in Japan until the 1997 enforcement of the Organ Transplant Law.
A Sapporo native, Wada graduated from the School of Medicine at Hokkaido University in 1944 and served as a professor at the Sapporo Medical University and the Tokyo Women's Medical University.
After retiring, he set up a heart and lung research institute.
(Mainichi Japan) February 15, 2011
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