Surgeons from the University of Maryland School of Medicine have once again transplanted a pig heart into a man's body. According to the Associated Press, this marks the second case of its kind in history. The patient, Lawrence Faucette, is 58 years old and was suffering from a condition that could lead to heart failure. He was not eligible for a human heart transplant due to vascular disease and complications related to internal bleeding. The patient had no chance of survival without experimental surgical intervention. After the heart transplant, the man began breathing on his own, and his new heart functioned correctly without the need for assistive devices. Doctors prescribed him conventional anti-rejection medications and antibody therapy. The heart was obtained from a genetically modified pig to avoid the problem of the patient's immune system attacking the transplant.
It is worth noting that the same doctors performed the first pig heart transplant in 2022 in a 57-year-old man. However, that patient lived only a few months after the procedure due to sudden heart failure. Investigations revealed that the cause was the patient's poor health, as well as the potential infiltration of a pig virus into the heart.
