Pig Heart Transplant

We recently featured a blog post about a pig kidney being transplanted into a man who was in a coma and brain dead.  In a quick update on that story, he was able to live on life support with the pig kidney for a second month.  Earlier this month, surgeons at NYU Langone Health removed the pig kidney and returned the donated body of Maurice "Mo" Miller to his family for cremation.  It marked the longest a genetically modified pig kidney has ever functioned inside a human.  Dr. Robert Montgomery, the transplant surgeon who led this experiment, said, "Two months is a lot to have a pig kidney in this good a condition.  That gives you a lot of confidence for the next attempts."

On September 20, 2023, surgeons transplanted a pig's heart into a dying man in an effort to prolong his life.  Lawrence Faucette, a 58-year-old Navy veteran, is only the second person to ever undergo such an experimental operation.  He was facing almost certain death from heart failure, but other health problems meant he was not eligible for a traditional heart transplant, according to his doctors at University of Maryland Medicine.  

To make this transplant attempt in a living patient, the Maryland researchers had to receive special permission from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), using the "compassionate use" process reserved for experimental emergency procedures to be performed on a single patient.  Mr. Faucette, who retired as a lab technician at the National Institutes of Health, agreed that he fully understood the risks of this procedure.  

The first pig heart transplant recipient, Mr. David Bennett, died after two months due to multiple complications.  Traces of a virus that infects pigs were found in his new heart, raising concerns that xenotransplants of organs from animals to people could introduce new pathogens into the human population.  Hospital officials said they repeatedly tested the pig used in Mr. Faucette's transplant for both the virus, called porcine cytomegalovirus, and antibodies using a new assay that was not available at the time of Mr. Bennett's transplant.

Before the operation, Mr. Faucette said, "Nobody knows from this point forward.  At least now I have hope and I have a chance."  His wife, Ann, said the two were keeping expectations low and just hoping for some more time together.  "That could be as simple as sitting on the front porch and having coffee together," she added.

Just two days after the transplant, he was sitting in a chair and cracking jokes with his doctors; his new heart was functioning well without any supportive machinery.  The next few weeks are obviously critical, but his doctors are very pleased with the progress so far.

"While decedent trials are informative, transplants in living recipients are, of course, most relevant to advancing knowledge in the field," Dr. Jay Fishman, a professor of medicine at Harvard and associate director of the Transplant Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, said.  He is optimistic that this surgery would encourage scientists to enter the field and accelerate the path to clinical trials.

There is a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant.  Last year, there were just over 4,100 heart transplants in the U.S., a record number but the supply is so tight that only patients with the best chance of long-term survival get offered one.

How can you help?  Sign up to be an organ donor! You can sign up online by visiting https://www.organdonor.gov/sign-up or by visiting your local department of motor vehicles office.  If you have a living will or advanced health care directive, it should list your wish for donating organs, tissues, or other body parts.  Also, make sure to tell your family of your wishes for donation.