Lawrence Faucette, the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig heart in a transplant, has died six weeks after the experimental procedure. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the experimental procedure had been performed, said the heart began to show signs of rejection in recent days.
“Mr. Faucette’s last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience, so others may be guaranteed a chance for a new heart when a human organ is unavailable. He then told the team of doctors and nurses who gathered around him that he loved us. We will miss him tremendously,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, clinical director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a statement. Griffith had performed the experimental surgery.
My grandpa had a pig heart valve, and that thing lasted way longer than its warranty suggested. Yeah, he was told up front it would last ten years, but he got more out of it.
A lot of people think that regular human transplants are problem free but the vast majority of them are rejected by the receiver. If it’s for a life saving procedure it can only extend the life span by so much…
It's tough, these folks are often already in multiorgan failure because those organs were trying to hold up for their failing heart. So now you've got shot kidneys and lungs but a brand new heart to try and hold up those failing organs. Then you end up right back into heart failure.
Experiments are how we gain new information to try better the next time.
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[–]SeaJ@lemm.ee23 points2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
(1 child)
I guess we'll have to wait a bit to find out what killed him. The first person died due to several things like his condition and the heart had a pig virus.
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