The patient who received a pig heart transplant dies: what is known about the case

The first person to receive a pig heart transplant has died two months after the historic procedure in the United States, the hospital that performed the surgery said Wednesday.

David Bennett57, died on March 8 after receiving the transplant on January 7, said a statement from the University of Maryland Hospital in the eastern United States.

“His condition began to deteriorate several days ago,” indicated the note.

That surgery raised hopes that the u might one day solve the chronic shortage of human organs for donation.

The team behind the operation, however, said they remain optimistic about its future success.

“After it became clear that he would not recover, he was given compassionate palliative care. She was able to communicate with her family in the final hours”, the hospital statement said.

After the surgery, without signs of rejection, he indicated.

Bennett spent time with his family, participated in physical therapy sessions, watched the football Super Bowl and spoke often about wanting to go home to see his dog Lucky.

“He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought to the end. We express our sincerest condolences to his family,” stressed Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who led the procedure.

hope for the future

In October 2021 Bennett was admitted to the University of Maryland hospital. He was bedridden and connected to a life support machine. It was considered that , something that occurs when the recipient has poor underlying health.

Before consenting to receive the transplant, he was fully informed of the risks of the procedure and that the procedure was experimental with unknown risks and benefits. On December 31, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted one in the hope of saving his life.

“We gained invaluable learnings about how the genetically modified pig heart can function well inside the human body while the immune system behaves properly,” said Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of the university’s cardiac xenotransplantation program.

“We remain optimistic and plan to continue our work in future clinical trials.” remarked.

“Bennett became known to millions of people around the world for his courage and steadfast will to live,” added Griffith, who is also the Thomas E. and Alice Marie Hales Distinguished Professor in Transplant Surgery and Clinical Director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM).

For his part, Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at UMSOM, has expressed his gratitude to Bennett for having a to help contribute a wide range of knowledge in the field of xenotransplantation.

The pig from which the transplanted heart came was also used an experimental new drug, in addition to the usual anti-rejection drugs, to suppress the immune system. During grafting, the danger is that the latter does not detect the organ as a foreign body and begins to attack it.

Without this transplant, David Bennett was doomed. “It was death or this transplant. I want to live”said the patient before the operation.

“My father fought to the end for his life to spend more time with his family. We were able to spend precious weeks together when he was recovering from the operation, weeks that we would not have had without this miraculous effort”, his son David Bennett Jr. said in a statement.

“We hope that this story is a beginning of hope,, he added.

US media revealed that Bennett had been convicted of stabbing a man multiple times in 1988, leaving the victim paralyzed before he died in 2005.

Medical ethicists hold that a person’s criminal record should not influence their future health treatment.

Ideal donors

Nearly 110,000 Americans are currently on the waiting list for organ transplants, and more than 6,000 who need transplants die each year in the country.

In 1984, a baboon heart was transplanted into a baby, but the little boy, nicknamed “Baby Fae”,

Pig heart valves are already widely used in humans, and their skin can be used for grafts in burn victims.

For many, pigs are ideal organ donors due to their size, rapid growth, and in litters that include many offspring.

Agencies