Pioneering New Zealand heart patient dies

Heart transplant recipient Gilbert Smith, who was involved in New Zealand's first dual transplant operation, died last week.

The Masterton man was given a new heart at Auckland's Green Lane Hospital in 1994, when he was 56 and suffering from chronic heart failure.

The same day, for the first time in New Zealand, surgeons transplanted a lung from the same donor into another patient in a separate operating theatre.

Mr Smith is survived by his wife, Tricia, his three children and four grandchildren.