
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994                   TAG: 9407070136
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

LONGEST SURVIVOR OF HEART TRANSPLANT DIES

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Dirk van Zyl, who lived the longest following a heart transplant, 23 years, died Wednesday in a nursing home. He was 68.

Van Zyl had recently suffered a stroke that left him paralyzed on his left side, and his death was not caused by heart failure, said his son, Coenie van Zyl.

The elder van Zyl received a new heart in a 1971 operation performed by the pioneering surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard. He was Barnard's sixth transplant patient. Barnard performed the world's first heart transplant in 1967 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

|- Associated Press

by CNB