Six weeks after surgery, the second “pig heart” recipient in the US passes away

Six weeks after the experimental treatment, an American man who became the second person to get a “pig heart transplant” died suddenly on Monday, according to the Associated Press. According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the transplanted heart seemed healthy for the first month, but in the last few days, rejection symptoms started to show.

On September 20, Lawrence Faucette, 58, who had heart problems, got the genetically altered pig heart since he was ineligible for a traditional heart transplant. According to the article, Ann, Faucette’s wife, knew that her husband’s time with them would be limited and that this was his last opportunity to help others. He never thought he would live for so long.”

Last year, the Maryland medical team successfully performed the first-ever transplant of a genetically altered pig heart into a different critically sick patient. The first pig heart was given to David Bennett, who lived for two months until the organ died for unknown reasons. Afterwards, however, symptoms of a pig virus were found within the heart. Improvements, including more stringent virus testing before to the second effort, resulted from lessons learnt from the first experiment.

What made Faucette decide to get a “pig heart transplant”?

When Faucette sought care at the Maryland hospital, his underlying health conditions prevented him from receiving a typical heart transplant. Faucette is a father of two who served in the Navy and now lives in Frederick, Maryland. He said he was out of alternatives and that he wanted to be with his family more. The hospital posted video footage of Faucette undergoing intense physical treatment to restore the strength required for walking and stated that he had made improvement in mid-October.

Synthetic organs

According to the Associated Press, the Maryland hospital’s chief of cardiac xenotransplantation said that in addition to expanding their research on pig organs, they aim to look at heart rejection in pigs.

Many experts believe that the significant lack of human organ donations may someday be addressed by xenotransplants, which include utilizing animal organs for human transplantation. More than 100,000 people in the US are waiting for transplants, mostly kidneys, and many of them may not make it through the waiting period.

Pig hearts and kidneys have been used in trials by several scientific teams on monkeys and human bodies that have been given for study. Their goal is to gather enough information so that official xenotransplant research may be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.