First, US surgeons transplant pig hearts into human patients

Baltimore: In the first stages of medical care, doctors transplanted a pig’s heart into a patient in the last effort to save his life, and Maryland Hospital successfully on Monday three days after his highly experimental surgery. I said I’m doing it.

It’s too early to know if surgery actually works, but it represents a step in decades of quest for the day of using animal organs for life-saving transplants. According to doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center, transplantation has shown that the heart of genetically modified animals can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

Patient David Bennett, a 57-year-old Maryland handyman, knew there was no guarantee that the experiment would work, but he was dying and ineligible for a human heart transplant, and other options were Not, his son told The Associated Press.

It was either dead or this transplant. want to live. According to a statement from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, I know it’s a shot in the dark, but Bennett said it was my last choice the day before surgery.

On Monday, Bennett was breathing on his own while still connected to a heart-lung machine to help his new heart. The next few weeks will be important as Bennett recovers from surgery and doctors carefully monitor how his heart is progressing.

There is a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplants, and scientists are instead trying to understand how to use animal organs. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the United States, a record number, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the US transplant system.

“If this goes well, these organs will be infinitely supplied for suffering patients,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiudin, director of science at the University of Maryland’s animal-to-human transplant program. rice field.

However, previous attempts at such transplants or xenografts have failed, primarily because the patient’s body rapidly rejected animal organs. In particular, in 1984, Baby Fae, a dying baby, lived for 21 days with a baboon heart.

This difference: Maryland surgeons used a genetically-edited pig heart to remove the intracellular sugar responsible for its ultrafast organ rejection. Several biotechnology companies are developing pig organs for human transplants. The one used for Friday’s surgery was from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.

Dr. David Klassen, Chief Medical Officer of UNOS, thinks that Maryland’s transplant can be characterized as a watershed event.

Still, Klassen warned that this is only the first tentative step in investigating whether xenotransplantation will ultimately work.

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees such experiments, has allowed surgery under so-called compassionate emergency use permits, which can be used when patients with life-threatening conditions have no other option.

It is important to share the data collected from this transplant and then provide it to more patients, said Karen Mashke, a researcher at the Hastings Center. Health Research Institute.

It is not advisable to rush into an animal-to-human transplant without this information, Mashke said.

Over the years, scientists have changed from primates to pigs and tinkered with genes.

Just last September, researchers in New York conducted an experiment suggesting that these types of pigs may be promising for animal-to-human transplantation. Doctors temporarily attached the pig’s kidneys to the deceased human body and observed it begin to function.

Maryland transplants take their experiments to the next level, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the work at NYU Langone Health.

This is a truly amazing advance, “he said in a statement. “As a recipient of heart transplants, I have a hereditary heart disease myself. I hope this news and this news will give to my family and other patients.

The surgery last Friday took 7 hours at Baltimore Hospital. Dr. Bartley Griffith, who underwent surgery, said he was excluded from human heart transplants and heart pumps due to the patient’s heart failure condition and arrhythmia.

Griffith had transplanted pig hearts into about 50 baboons in five years before offering Bennett an option.

According to Griffith, we learn a lot every day with this gentleman. And so far, we are happy with our decision to move forward. And so is he: there is a big smile on his face today.

The pig heart valve has also been successfully used in humans for decades, and Bennett’s son said his father received it about 10 years ago.

When it comes to heart transplants, he recognizes the magnitude of what has been done and he really recognizes the importance of it, said David Bennett Jr. He couldn’t live, or he could last a day, or he could last a few days. So we are in an unknown state at this point.