Keith Castle, at the age of 52, was the recipient of the first successful heart transplant operation to be carried out in the United Kingdom. The operation was performed in August 1979 at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire by surgeon

Sir Terence English Sir Terence Alexander Hawthorne English (born October 1932)'ENGLISH, Sir Terence (Alexander Hawthorne)', Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2013; online edn, Dec ...

, who would later describe Castle as a "wonderful man," but "not an ideal patient from a medical point of view" on account of Castle's vascular disease of the legs, peptic ulcer, and history of smoking. In the year following the transplant, the ''

British Medical Journal ''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origin ...

'' published an article entitled "Function Of The Transplanted Heart" referencing the operation: "How well does the transplanted (and therefore denervated) heart perform? The immediate and practical answer is, well enough, as the activities of patients such as Mr Keith Castle have shown." Castle survived for more than five years after the operation.

References

1985 deaths Heart_transplant_recipients {{UK-med-bio-stub