The second patient who received a heart transplant from a pig died on Monday. Lawrence Faucette, 58, died almost six weeks after the highly experimental surgery, Maryland doctors announced to the US media.
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The man suffered from severe heart failure and was ineligible to receive a traditional heart transplant in the condition he was in when he received the heart of a genetically modified pig. It was September 20th.
According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the heart appeared healthy for the first month but then began to show signs of rejection in the last few days.
In a statement released by the hospital, Faucette’s wife, Ann, explained that her husband “knew his time with us was short and this was his last chance to do something for others. He never imagined that he would survive this long.”
The first operation using a pig heart was performed in January 2022, in the same hospital and by the same surgeons. The patient was David Bennett. No rejection crisis in the first weeks immediately after the operation but, after two months, the patient had died.
In the two years that passed between the first and second intervention of the same type, the specialists from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (Umsom) had deepened their studies also by reasoning on the first experience of this type and refining the intervention techniques after the first xenotransplantation genetically modified heart disease in the world.
In the authoritative scientific journal The Lancet they had also published the results of their studies, describing in detail this first pioneering operation.
The patient operated on in 2022 was 57 years old and had end-stage heart failure. To ascertain the cause of the xenograft dysfunction, they had conducted extensive immunological and histopathological studies, including electron microscopy and quantification of porcine cytomegalovirus or porcine roseolovirus (PCMV/PRV) in the xenograft, recipient cells and tissue by DNA PCR and RNA transcription.
As explained in the journal, “at postoperative day 50, endomyocardial biopsy revealed damaged capillaries with interstitial edema, red blood cell extravasation, rare thrombotic microangiopathy, and complement deposition.”
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