Portugal's heart transplant journey: 40 years of saving lives through innovation

Forty years ago, Portugal marked a medical milestone with its first heart transplant. The procedure, carried out by surgeon João Queiroz e Melo, opened new possibilities for patients with severe heart conditions. Since then, advancements in transplant surgery have extended lives and set records across the country. The journey began on February 18, 1984, when Eva Pinto, aged 54, became the first person in Portugal to receive a donor heart. Her new organ functioned for nine years before she died in 1995. This early success came just a year after immunosuppressant drugs, introduced in 1983, had slashed rejection risks for transplant patients.

Another landmark followed on July 10, 1988, when Manuel Camões, then 50, underwent the country’s first heart transplant performed without senior supervision. Now 87, he remains Portugal’s longest-surviving recipient from the pre-modern era of the surgery.

More recently, Armando Ferro made history twice. Diagnosed with Becker muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy, he received his first heart transplant at 33 in 2001. Then, in January 2020, he became the first patient at Lisbon Western Local Health Unit/Santa Cruz Hospital to undergo a second transplant. From Eva Pinto’s pioneering operation to Armando Ferro’s double transplant, Portugal’s heart transplant programme has evolved significantly. Improved drugs and surgical techniques have allowed patients like Manuel Camões to live decades beyond their procedures. These cases highlight how far medical progress has come in saving lives.