Man With Life-Threatening Cardiac Condition Successfully Receives Pig Heart In First Breakthrough Transplant

A 57-year-old man with a life-threatening cardiac condition has gotten a heart transplant from a genetically engineered pig. It's a pioneering technique that provides hope to hundreds of thousands of patients whose organs are failing.

It's the first time a pig's heart has been successfully transplanted into a human person. Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center said that the eight-hour procedure occurred in Baltimore on Friday. The patient, David Bennett Sr. of Maryland, did well on Monday.

(Photo: JAVIER SORIANO/AFP via Getty Images)
[Representational image] Cardiovascular surgeons Susana Villar (C) and Elsa Rios (R) remove the faulty heart from a patient to implant another one from a donor, at an operating theatre in Puerta de Hierro University Hospital in Majadahonda, near Madrid, . - For a time-critical procedure that is heavily reliant on intensive care, the Covid pandemic and its explosion of desperately-ill patients has thrown up a barrage of complexities which Spain's world leading organ transplant experts have been forced to surmount.

First Pig-To-Human Heart Transplant Successful

According to USA Today, Bennett decided to be the first to undergo the experimental procedure in the hopes of returning to his Maryland duplex and his pet dog, Lucky.

Doctors substituted his heart with one from a 1-year-old, 240-pound (108-kilogram) pig that had been gene-edited and raised expressly for this purpose during the nine-hour procedure.

Bennett is no longer on a ventilator and is breathing on his own, however, he is still hooked up to an ECMO machine that handles roughly half of the work of pumping blood throughout his body. Doctors intend to gradually wean him off the medication.

Because there is a severe scarcity of human organs available for transplant, scientists are attempting to find a way to use animal organs instead. The United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages the nation's transplant system, tallied more than 3,800 heart transplants in the United States last year.

However, previous attempts at such transplants - known as xenotransplantation - have failed, owing to the body's fast rejection of the animal organ. In 1984, a dying newborn named Baby Fae survived for 21 days with a baboon heart.

But this time, Maryland surgeons used a heart from a genetically-edited pig to reduce sugar in its cells that immediately cause organ rejection.

ALSO READ: U.S. Surgeons Successfully Transplanted A Pig Kidney To A Human Patient And It Works

Xenotransplantation Explained

CBS Baltimore said the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates xenotransplantation research, approved the procedure under a "compassionate use" emergency authorization. This permission is granted when a patient with a life-threatening disease has no other choices.

The technique of attaching or transplanting organs or tissues from animals to humans, known as xenotransplantation, has a long history. The New York Times said that attempts to utilize animal blood and skin date to several years.

Chimpanzee kidneys were transplanted into some human patients in the 1960s, but the recipients only lasted for nine months. In 1983, a child named Baby Fae had a baboon heart transplanted into her, but she died 20 days afterward.

In September 2021, researchers in New York conducted an experiment that suggested these types of pigs may be useful for animal-to-human transplants. Doctors briefly implanted a pig's kidney into the body of a deceased person and watched its function.

According to Dr. Robert Montgomery, who supervised the trial at NYU Langone Health, the Maryland transplant takes their work to the next level.

Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center who is assisting in the development of ethics and policy guidelines for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health, said it would be critical to share the data obtained from this transplant before offering the option to add people.

Experts Try to Save Human Lives Through Animal Organs

For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out how to save human lives using animal organs. Organ Donor said more than 100,000 patients are waiting for organ transplants and are experiencing awful symptoms and side effects as a result. Every year, almost 6,000 of them die while waiting for someone else's misfortune to supply them with a kidney, heart, or lung.

Pigs have organs that are comparable to those seen in humans. The wait would be over if those organs could be utilized in transplants. People who would never be considered transplant candidates or make it onto the transplant waiting lists may look forward to family meals, playing with their children or grandchildren, and just getting back to enjoying their lives.

Experts stressed that this is merely the first preliminary step in determining if xenotransplantation will succeed this time.