A First in the World

Years of work on transplanting pig organs to humans have just begun to bear fruit, and for the first time in the world, a pig heart has been transplanted into a human. The patient's condition is reported to be good now.

While the medical world continues to work on organ transplantation from animal to human, we have witnessed very important developments in recent years. About two years ago, we shared with you the statement of scientists, "Pig to human heart transplant can be done in 5 years". Following this announcement, the world's first pig-to-human kidney transplant, the first stage of this, was performed in the past months.

The pig-to-human kidney transplant would provide information that would allow it to move to the next stage. The kidney transplant was successful, and the medical community gradually began to work on the pig heart transplant as well. The other day, a first in the medical world was signed and a pig's heart was transplanted into a human.

The patient's condition is good.

The pig-to-human heart transplant surgery was performed last Friday at the University of Maryland Medical Center in the United States. The pig heart transplanted was 57-year-old David Bennett. Bennett agreed to have this surgery as a last resort in order not to die. But Bennett was not considered eligible for a human heart transplant for some reason.

Performing the surgery, Dr. Bartley Griffith explained that Bennett, who suffers from heart failure and an irregular heartbeat, is not suitable for a human heart transplant or a heart pump. After three days of this highly experimental and 7-hour surgery, it was announced that Bennett's condition was good.

Before performing this surgery, Griffith had long worked to enable animal-to-human heart transplants. Before he offered this surgery to Bennett, 50 baboons had previously performed pig hearts. “It may not live, it may last a day, or it may last a few days,” Bennett said in a statement. So we're in the unknown right now." used the phrases.

The pig from which the heart was taken was a genetically modified pig

The sugar in the pig gene, which caused the direct rejection of the transplanted heart by the human, was removed by gene editing. While many biotech companies are currently developing pig organs for transplant into humans, the heart used in this surgery was supplied by Revivicor.