1st heart transplant surgeon dies

Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz, who performed the nation’s first human heart transplant and developed lifesaving medical implants, has died. He was 90.

Kantrowitz died Friday in Ann Arbor of complications from heart failure, said his wife, Jean.

In 1967, Kantrowitz performed the first human heart transplant in the United States, three days after the world’s first one was performed in South Africa.

But the transplant, on an infant who died several hours later, was only a small part of his life’s work to solve the problem of heart failure, his wife said.

Adrian Kantrowitz invented and for decades continued to improve the left ventricular assist device, or LVAD, which would later lend its name to his Detroit-based research company, L-VAD Technology Inc.