Shumway and Barnard crossed paths again in 1966 when Barnard visited Stanford. he was the second doctor to carry out a human
heart transplant operation in the
United States in 1968, after Barnard's operation in
South Africa, and
Adrian Kantrowitz's at
Maimonides Medical Center in
Brooklyn,
New York, both in 1967. Barnard's work has been noted to be partly based upon the work of
Vladimir Demikhov, Shumway and
Richard Lower. The early years of the procedure were difficult, with few patients surviving for long. Shumway was the only American surgeon to continue performing the operation after the poor survival outcomes of early transplants. In the 1970s he and his team refined the transplant operation, tackling the problems of
rejection and the necessity for potentially dangerous
drugs to suppress the immune system. He pioneered the use of
cyclosporine, instead of traditional drugs, which made the operation safer. Shumway was inspired by Nobel Prize winners
Joseph Murray and
Peter Medawar. The world's first heart-lung transplant was performed in 1981, by Shumway and
Bruce Reitz. ==Awards==