Pig’s Heart Transplant for Human

Surgeons have transplanted a pig’s heart into a dying man in a bid to prolong his life. This is the second patient to ever undergo such an experimental procedure.

Notably, earlier, the first man who transplanted the pig’s heart in January 2022 died after two months.

Two days after the Wednesday procedure, the man was cracking jokes and able to sit in a chair, Maryland doctors said Friday.

The 58-year-old Navy veteran Lawrence Faucette was facing near-certain death from heart failure, but other health problems prevented a traditional heart transplant, according to doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Nobody knows from this point forward. At least now I have hope and I have a chance,” Faucette, from Frederick, Maryland, said in a video recorded by the hospital before Wednesday’s operation, per the AP. “I will fight tooth and nail for every breath I can take.”

While the next few weeks will be critical, doctors were thrilled at Faucette’s early response to the pig organ. “I just keep shaking my head—how am I talking to someone who has a pig’s heart?” said Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant.

Last year, the same Maryland team performed the world’s first transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into another dying man, David Bennett, who survived just two months. There’s a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant.

Only last year, there were just over 4,100 heart transplants in the US, a record number, but the supply is so tight that only patients with chances of long-term survival get offered one.  

Recently, scientists at other hospitals have tested pig kidneys and hearts in donated human bodies, hoping to learn enough to begin formal studies of what are called xenotransplants. To make this new attempt on a living patient outside of a rigorous trial, the Maryland researchers required special permission from the FDA, under a process reserved for certain emergency cases with no other options.