Brian Thomson spoke with staff from the cardio and thoracic team at Wellington Hospital. The certificates he donated hung on the walls of the ward.
Thomson was also believed to be the first person in the world to have a heart aneurysm treated by endovascular coiling, which had previously only been used to treat brain aneurysms.
Earlier this month, he travelled to Wellington Regional Hospital with his family to meet the hospital’s current cardio and thoracic team – 46 years after his first surgery.
He donated his world record certificates to the hospital, saying the institution “deserved” to have them on the wall.
The exact ward Thomson was treated in no longer existed after Wellington Hospital was rebuilt in 2009, and the surgeons who helped saved his life have since moved on.
All that was left is the facade of the old building, which he looked on fondly during his visit.
Brian Thomson became the longest-surviving quintuple heart bypass patient in the world in 2024. He is pictured next to the facade of the old Wellington Hospital, where he was operated on decades ago.
Across four decades, he also survived two aneurysms, with his key medical milestones having a habit of falling around holidays.
On Christmas Eve in 1979, he found out he had damaged coronary arteries.
His first heart bypass happened on the eve of Anzac Day in 1980 in Wellington Hospital, where he was the youngest person in his ward.
The emergency surgery that removed a 70mm cricket ball-sized aneurysm took place on Labour weekend in 2014.
Thomson had biked the 150km Otago Rail Trail with the aneurysm, none the wiser.
“It was killing me but it was killing me slowly enough that something could be done,” he said.
That aneurysm had eroded into the heart, leaving Thomson with a 25% chance of surviving.
“Most people in my position did not make it through the operation.”
One of the two Guinness World Record certificates Brian Thomson donated to Wellington Hospital, where he had his quintuple bypass.
Thomson had received bad news from doctors several times throughout his life and said he “found honesty easier to work with than reassurance”.
He chronicled his health journey in a book called Still Beating and hoped to get it published so he could inspire other cardiac patients.
In it, he credited his wife Marg Thomson for making difficult decisions and being “a woman who answered every crisis with logistics rather than emotion”.
Thomson said he continued to spend his days the same as he always had: a morning walk, followed by furniture making, surrounded by “the smell of fresh-cut timber”.
“The heart is still beating.
“Forty-six years of extra time. I have tried to spend it sensibly.”
Wellington Hospital’s consultant cardiothoracic surgeon Sean Galvin said Thomson’s enduring health was a “remarkable testament to both his resilience and the quality of the surgery he received at that time”.
Cardiac surgery had significantly advanced since Thomson was operated on, with improvements in techniques, technology and recovery outcomes.
That made his long-term survival “especially impressive”, Galvin said.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.