Recently, doctors at a Maryland hospital in the US performed a pig heart transplant in a last attempt to save a patient’s life. This has been done for the first time in the history of medicine.
The patient is recovering after three days of this surgery. It is an important step in the decades-long debate over using animal organs for life-saving transplants. However, it is too soon to know whether the operation will work.
According to doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center, the transplant highlights how the heart of a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.
There is an acute shortage of human organs, which are donated for transplantation. This prompts scientists to figure out how to use animal organs for transplants. In 2021, there were about 3,800 heart transplants in the US. So if this experiment works, there will be an endless supply of these organs from animals for patients.
Earlier attempts at such transplants have largely failed. This is because the patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. For example, in 1984, baby Fay, a dying infant, lived with a baboon’s heart for 21 days.
