Man Receives World’s First Pig-To-Human Heart Transplant

For the first time ever, a patient with a life-threatening heart disease has recently been in surgery to receive a genetically modified heart from a pig. The historic surgery was conducted by the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) faculty at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). The patient in question is a 57-year-old man called David Bennet, who is continuing to do well after a few days with no sign of rejection by his body; he was unfortunately “ineligible for a conventional heart transplant at UMMC as well as at several other leading transplant centers that reviewed his medical records”, which is why he accepted the pig heart transplant.

The successful organ transplant has demonstrated for the first time that a genetically modified animal heart is able to function like a human heart without an immediate rejection by the body, so it is possible that although this is the first event of a pig-to-human heart transplant, it will not be the last.

The patient, David Bennet, is being carefully monitored over the next few weeks to ensure he is doing well and to determine whether the transplant provides lifesaving benefits. He was hospitalised and bedridden for the past few months, so the day before his surgery, he said, “It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice. I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted emergency authorisation for the surgery on New Year’s Eve through its expanded access provision, which is “used when an experimental medical product, in this case the genetically modified pig’s heart, is the only option available for a patient faced with a serious or life-threatening medical condition. The authorisation to proceed was granted in the hope of saving the patient’s life.”

Bartley P. Griffith, MD, who surgically transplanted the pig heart into the patient, said, “This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis. There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients. We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future.”

Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, MD, Professor of Surgery at UMSOM, is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on transplanting animal organs. He spoke of this surgery, saying, “This is the culmination of years of highly complicated research to hone this technique in animals with survival times that have reached beyond nine months. The FDA used our data and data on the experimental pig to authorize the transplant in an end-stage heart disease patient who had no other treatment options. The successful procedure provided valuable information to help the medical community improve this potentially life-saving method in future patients.”

If you would like to read more on the pig-to-human heart transplant, follow the link HERE to go to the official University of Maryland School of Medicine website and read through the article full of information on the surgery and statistics written by Deborah Kotz.