In the age of advanced technology, everything is possible nowadays. Even when it comes to the health department because there has been so much tech involved in it to transplant and do other procedures to save human lives.
But there’s always have been a problem of compatibility when it comes to transplants because they should be functional. Last year doctors have discovered something unique which miraculously paired and worked with human organs.
It used to be a big myth, but no one knew that it could have been done in reality for real.
In the US, surgeons successfully planted pig kidneys in the human body and it worked out perfectly. Although they didn’t install it in the human body but checked the possibility so it worked and confirmed that it’s compatible.
But no one thoughts, they might go that far and direct attack on a heart transplant. Yes! You heard it right, heart transplant surgery also took place and it was successful in every manner.
In the United States, a 57-year-old man becomes the first person in the world to get a heart transplant from a genetically-modified pig.
World’s first successful pig heart transplant in the human body
Mr. David Bennett is the first recipient who involved himself in this experiment, as per the doctors it’s been three days and seven-hour procedure in Baltimore.
There was no hope to save David because it was hard to find a paired one heart and it’s tough too. But this experiment become his savior and brought him back to life.
Although there’s no guaranteed chance for how long it will last long. According to David, “It was either die or do this transplant,” Mr. Bennett explained a day before the surgery.
“I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” he said.
David’s condition was critical and it’s necessary to do such a special procedure. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center got permission from the US medical to carry out such different operations.
He’s more of a risk – Christine Lau
As per Doctor Christine Lau, chair of the Department of Surgery at the University Of Maryland School Of Medicine, she was also part of the whole surgery.
“He’s at more of a risk because we require more immunosuppression, slightly different than we would normally do in a human-to-human transplant. How well the patient does from now is, you know, it’s never been done before so we don’t know,” she told the BBC.
“People die all the time on the waiting list, waiting for organs. If we could use genetically engineered pig organs they’d never have to wait, they could get an organ as they needed it.
“Plus, we wouldn’t have to fly all over the country at night-time to recover organs to put them into recipients,” she added.
On the other hand, Mr. Griffith said they were proceeding cautiously and carefully monitoring Mr. Bennett, while his son David Bennett Jr. told the Associated Press that the family was “in the unknown at this point”.
But he added: “He realizes the magnitude of what was done and he realizes the importance of it.”
“We’ve never done this in a human and I like to think that we, we have given him a better option than what continuing his therapy would have been,” Mr. Griffith said. “But whether [he will live for] a day, week, month, year, I don’t know.”
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