In addition to severe heart failure, the patient has other health problems that make him unsuitable for a traditional transplant. Mark Teske/AP
This Wednesday, surgeons at the University of Maryland Hospital in the United States successfully transplanted – for the second time in history – a pig’s heart into 58-year-old Lawrence Faucette. The same team performed the first transplant of its kind in 2022.
Faucette was almost certain to die due to heart failure, while other health problems made him unsuitable for a traditional transplant.
According to the hospital The patient’s new heart functions well without support mechanisms.
“From now on, no one knows. At least now I have hope and a chance,” Faucette said, adding that he will fight “with all his might for every breath” he can get. His wife, Ann Faucette, said they had no expectations “other than staying together longer.”
Muhammad Mohiuddin, a xenotransplantation expert on the medical team, described it as “surprising” to see how the pig heart works in a human organism.
However, He said he “didn’t want to predict anything.”that doctors will perceive “every day as a victory” and move forward.
To perform the transplant, doctors needed special permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which required filling out more than 300 pages of documents.
Apparently they drew on experience from the previous operation when a patient died two months later for reasons that were not yet fully understood.
(With information from RT in Spanish)
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The first “heart” derived from stem cells beats in Japan