In the USA, a man was transplanted with a pig’s heart
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In the US, surgeons transplanted a pig’s heart into a man to prolong his life. 58-year-old Navy veteran Lawrence Faucett became the second patient in the world to undergo a similar experiment, reports Medicalxpress. Two days after the operation, Lawrence Faucett began to joke and was able to sit in a chair. According to the doctors at the University of Maryland, who performed the intervention, “the man was in danger of almost certain death” from heart failure, but due to other health problems, he could not receive a heart transplant from a human donor. “I will hang on to life tooth and nail, fight for every breath I can take,” says Lawrence Faucett. Lawrence Faucett and his wife. Photo: University of Maryland School of Medicine Although the next few weeks will be crucial, doctors were delighted with the patient’s response to the unusual transplant. “You know, I’m just nodding my head – how can I talk to someone with a pig’s heart?” – jokes Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant. The same Maryland team last year performed the world’s first genetically modified pig heart transplant on David Bennett, who lived for just two months. There is a huge shortage of human organs for transplantation in the country. Last year, more than 4,100 heart transplants were performed in the United States. This is a record number, but supply is so limited that operations are only offered to patients with the best chance of long-term survival. Attempts to transplant organs from animals to humans have failed for decades because the human immune system immediately destroys the foreign tissue. Now, scientists are once again trying to use genetically modified pigs to make their organs more human-like. Recently, scientists at other hospitals have been testing pig kidneys and hearts in donated human bodies, hoping to learn enough to begin formal research into so-called xenografts. In order to get permission to operate on Lawrence Faucett, the Maryland researchers needed a special permit from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Doctors submitted 300 pages of documents describing the operation to the department. The doctors said that although the first patient died, they gained experience and want to try again. In a statement, Lawrence’s wife wrote: “We have no expectations other than the hope that we will have more time together. At least time to sit on the porch and drink coffee together.” What’s different this time After last year’s transplant, scientists found signs of a pig virus lurking in the heart, and now they have better tests to find hidden viruses. Transplantation of a pig’s heart into a human. Photo: University of Maryland School of Medicine They also made some changes to the medicine. In addition, Faucett, although he had end-stage heart failure, was in better condition than the previous patient. At this time, his new heart is functioning well without any assistive devices, the hospital said. “It’s just an incredible feeling to see how this pig heart works in the human body,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, a xenotransplantation expert at the Maryland group. However, he noted that he does not want to predict anything. “We will take every day as a victory and move forward,” he added. The pig heart was provided by Revivicor of Blacksburg, Virginia, and has 10 genetic modifications, removing some pig genes and adding some human genes to make it more acceptable to the human immune system. Read also: 6-year-old Solomiya was discharged from the hospital after having another child’s heart transplanted
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