Surgeons in the United States (US) have broken a world record by transplanting the heart of a pig into a dying man for the very first time in the world. Daily Mail reported on Monday that Surgeons transplanted a genetically-modified pig’s heart into a 57-year-old man, David Bennet, at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore on Saturday. The experimental surgery, which took about nine hours to complete required gene-editing on the pig’s heart, in order to remove sugar cells which would reduce the likelihood of the patient’s immune system from rejecting the transplanted organ.
Bennet was diagnosed and suffering from terminal heart failure and was too sick to qualify for a human heart transplant. He said, “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.”
After the operation, Bennet was connected to a heart-lung machine that would help his new heart pump blood around his body. Experts say it is too early to determine if his body would completely accept the new organ.
They said it would take a few weeks to verify if his body would fully accept or reject the organ when his body would be taken off the machine.
However, if successful, this would mark a medical breakthrough that could save thousands of lives because there is a huge shortage of available human organs for transplant in the US.
According to reports, on average 20 people die every day waiting for an organ to be available. Prior attempts at such transplants or xenotransplantation had failed largely because patients’ bodies quickly reject the transplanted animal organ.
