In a medical premiere, doctors transplanted a pig’s heart to a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life, and a Maryland hospital said Monday that he was fine three days after the highly experimental surgery.
Doctors transplanted a pig’s heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life, a first in medical science. Doctors from the University of Maryland medical school said Monday the patient was fine three days after surgery. The patient is David, 57 years old. Bennett, a Maryland craftsman, is too sick to have a human heart. Bennett said before the operation, “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last option.” The operation on Friday showed for the first time that a genetically modified animal heart can function in the human body without immediate rejection.
It was either dying or doing this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a chance in the dark, but it’s my last option, “Bennett said the day before surgery, according to a statement from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Medicine.
There is a serious shortage of donated human organs for transplants, leading scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants at the U.S. Organ Sharing, which oversees the country’s transplant system.
If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for suffering patients,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, Scientific Director of the Animal-to-Human Transplant Program at the University of Maryland.
But previous attempts at such transplants have failed, mainly because the patient’s body quickly rejected the animal organ. In 1984, Baby Fae, a dying baby, lived with a baboon heart for 21 days.
The difference this time around: The surgeons in Maryland used a genetically modified heart from a pig to remove sugar in its cells that is responsible for hyper-rapid organ rejection. Several biotech companies are developing pig organs for human transplantation; the one used for Friday’s surgery was from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.
As recently as last September, researchers in New York conducted an experiment that suggested these types of pigs might show promise for animal-to-human transplants. Doctors temporarily attached a pig kidney to a deceased human body and watched it begin to function.
This is really remarkable progress, ”he said in a saved statement. . for this advance.
The operation last Friday at Baltimore Hospital took seven hours. Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery, said the patient’s condition – heart failure and irregular heartbeat – made him out of the question for a human heart transplant or heart pump.
Griffith had grafted pig hearts in about 50 baboons over five years before offering Bennett the option.
We learn a lot with this gentleman every day, ”said Griffith. “And so far we are happy with our decision to move forward. And he too: Big grin on my face today. It has been used successfully in humans for decades, and Bennett’s son said his father received one about a decade ago.
Regarding the heart transplant, “He is aware of the greatness of what has been done, and he is really aware of the importance of it,” said David Bennett Jr. “He might not live, or could not live for a day or a few days last. “on days. I mean, at this point we are in the unknown.
