2023-09-24 05:27:00
This week, a 58-year-old patient became the second person in the world to have a genetically modified pig heart transplanted into his body, in a new example of a very active field of research in recent years.
The first similar operation was conducted in 2022 at the same institution, the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the United States.
The university wrote in a statement on Friday that the patient at the time, David Bennett, died regarding two months following the operation “due to several factors, including his poor health” before the transplant.
Transplanting animal organs into humans might provide a solution to the chronic shortage of organ donors. There are currently more than 100,000 Americans on the waiting list for an organ transplant.
The new operation was performed on September 20, on Lawrence Fawcett, a retired soldier who suffers from a serious heart disease that might cause inevitable death. Doctors considered that this patient was not eligible to undergo a human heart transplant, and therefore this solution represented “the only option” for him, according to the statement.
He said before the operation, according to the same source, “At least now I have hope and a chance” to survive.
His wife said: “We have no expectations other than to spend more time together,” to enjoy “simple things like sitting on the balcony in front of the house and drinking coffee together.”
Doctors said Lawrence Fawcett is currently breathing on his own, and his new heart is working well without outside help.
The patient takes immunosuppressive treatments, in addition to a new “antibody treatment,” to avoid rejection of the transplanted organ.
Transplants of this type pose a challenge because the recipient’s immune system tends to respond to the foreign organ. For this reason, pigs are genetically modified to reduce this risk as well.
Recently, kidney transplants from genetically modified pigs have been performed on brain-dead patients.
The Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Hospital in New York announced this month that it had succeeded in operating a deceased person’s pig kidney for a period of two months, which is a record period.
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