CORRESPONDENCE

Celebrating 50 years of heart transplant surgery: A missed opportunity to honour Hamilton Naki

To the Editor: The authors of the guest editorial 'The world's first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital: 50 years later'^[1] wish to acknowledge the letter to the Editor by Mankahla et al. ^[2]addressing the omission of Mr Hamilton Naki from the invited commentary. This oversight was indeed a missed opportunity to once again honour Mr Naki's contribution to laboratory research at the University of Cape Town in a local journal. It is with pride that we refer readers of SAMJ to our article published concurrently in the European Heart Journal,^[3]which honours Mr Naki's formidable surgical skills despite a lack of formal training and recognises his contribution in training a future generation of surgeons.

Peter Zilla, Johan Brink, Tim Pennel

Christiaan Barnard Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Groote Schuur Hospital and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa. peter.zilla@uct.ac.za

References

1. Brink J, Pennel T, Seele K, Zilla P. The world's first human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital: 50 years later. S Afr Med J 2017;107(12):1035-1036. https://doi.org/10.7196/SAMJ.2017.v107i12.12960        [ Links ]

2. Mankahla N, Dlamini S, Taunyane IC, Maqungo S, Cairncross L, Chiliza B. Celebrating 50 years of heart transplant surgery: A missed opportunity to honour Hamilton Naki. S Afr Med J 2018;108(3):151. https://doi.org/10.7196/SAMJ.2018.v108i3.13114        [ Links ]

3. Sliwa K, Zilla P. 50th anniversary of the first human heart transplant - how is it seen today? Eur Heart J 2017;38(46):3402-3404. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurhearlj/ehx695        [ Links ]