Surgeons at Auckland's Greenlane Hospital have performed eight double-valve transplants using human heart valves, a spokesman for the hospital's surgical team said today, commenting on a report that South African surgeons had just carried out what they believed to be the first such operation.

The spokesman said the first double-valve transplant in Auckland was done three months ago. Six out of eight patients were alive, the spokesman said.

Although double transplants using human valves had been performed only recently, he said, double and even triple replacements, using metal or plastic valves, had been performed in Auckland since 1965, according to our correspondent.

The double-valve transplant performed by Johannesburg surgeons last week is technically much more important than complete heart transplants, according to medical authorities in Johannesburg, our correspondent reports.

The authorities agreed that the Cape Town transplants were a great surgical triumph. "If we get this type of operation perfected, far more people are going to benefit because in comparatively few cases is a complete heart transplant necessary", one said.

At the Florence Nightingale hospital, Johannesburg, last week, surgeons replaced the mitral and aortic valves in a patient's heart. It was the first time that two heart valves were replaced with human tissue in South Africa.

The patient, described today as "progressing favourably", is Mrs. Hilda White (32), of Ermelo. She is the wife of a sewing-machine salesman and the mother of five children. The operation was twice as long as one to replace single valve.