For the first time, doctors transplant a human patient's dying heart with a pig's heart.

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Last-ditch efforts were made to preserve the life of a Maryland man.

Before the procedure on the human patient, the donor pig's heart was surgically removed; pig organs are deemed appropriate for transplant to humans because they are nearly the same size and form.

A new version was released on March 9, 2022, which is as follows: Two months after the famous pig-heart transplant, the patient died. The cause of death remains a mystery to the medical community. Live Science has the complete story.

The heart of a genetically engineered pig was transplanted into the chest of a Maryland man in an attempt to save his life. An important step forward has been successfully made in the decades-long endeavor to transplant animal organs into humans with this first-of-its-kind surgery.

Time reports that in 1984 a baby named Baby Fae lived 21 days on a baboon's heart, but the method has since gone out of favor due to the high failure rates of human-animal organ transplants.

Researchers believe this latest transplant is a step forward since the donor pig underwent gene editing to remove an abnormal sugar from its cells that has been implicated in organ rejection. This sugar is assumed to be responsible for the rejection of prior transplants.

The human patient breathed independently when the procedure was completed on Friday (January 7). However, he was still attached to an artificial heart-lung machine to improve his blood flow, the University of Maryland Medical Center said in a statement (UMMC). If he survives the surgery, the next several days and weeks are vital.

According to the statement, one of the Maryland man's medical institutes had deemed him ineligible for a transplant because of his severe cardiac illness.

"It was a choice between death and a transplant. I long to be alive. I realize it's a leap of faith, but it's my only option at this point, "The day before Bennett's surgery, he stated. "When I get better, I can't wait to get out of bed."

Transplants of organs

U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval on New Year's Eve for an experimental procedure to save a patient's life in Maryland, according to a statement from the agency.

Doctor Bartley Griffith, director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at UMMC and the surgeon who conducted the transplant, said in a statement that "this was a breakthrough procedure, and it gets us one step closer to solving the organ scarcity situation." Because of the large number of people in need, there aren't enough human hearts available for donation.

He went on to say that the surgeons doing the transplant were careful but confident in the procedure's ability to save lives.

A record 3,800 heart transplants were performed in the United States last year, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages a network for organ transplants in the country.

According to the federal government's organdonor.gov website, more than 100,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and over 6,000 people die each year before receiving one.

Patients waiting for organ transplants could benefit from genetically changing donor animals so that their organs are less likely to be rejected by human hosts if this strategy proves viable in the long term.

Breakthrough medical treatment.

After the Baby Fae case in 1984, the experimental practice of transferring animal organs into humans was mainly abandoned.

In her case, physicians were hopeful that transplanting a baby baboon's heart would help keep her alive.

A month after the procedure, Baby Fae's immune system rejected the foreign heart, and she died.

Because they are nearly identical in size and form to human hearts, pigs make excellent candidates for organ donation.

Until now, the risk of a lethal immune system reaction has prohibited whole hearts from being transplanted using pig heart valves, which have been used safely for decades.

According to the statement, more than $15 million in research funding have been awarded to the University of Maryland School of Medicine for the evaluation of pig heart transplants.

Transplanting a human organ into a pig entails removing three genes from the donor pig's genome that cause a quick immunological reaction in the recipient and replacing them with six human genes that help the organ be accepted. Another gene was deleted to keep the pig's heart at a reasonable size. The patient was also given an experimental drug to inhibit the human immune system.

Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, the scientific director of the university's animal-to-human organ transplant program, told the AP that "if this works, there would be an infinite supply of these organs for those suffering."

Many biotech companies are now working on genetically modified pig organs that can be used in human transplants. Revivicor, a Maryland-based corporation United Therapeutics subsidiary, provided the heart used in the most recent procedure.

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/first-pig-heart-transplant-to-human

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/vectors/berjalan-kedudukan-babi-satwa-2672654/

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