New Delhi: Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) in Baltimore, US, performed a ‘historic’ surgery this week. The surgeon, who is a faculty of the Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a 57-year-old patient with terminal heart disease.
In a statement, UMMC said that the first transplant of its kind was the patient’s only survival option after UMMC, as well as other major transplant centers, were deemed ineligible for conventional transplantation. Three days after the historic surgery, the patient is still fine, the statement said.
The surgery marked the first time that a genetically modified animal heart could function as a human heart without being immediately rejected by the body.
David Bennett, the patient, is being closely monitored and will remain under observation for several weeks. It is up to them to determine whether the implant provides a life-saving benefit.
“It was either die or transplant it. I want to live I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” Bennett was quoted as saying in the statement the day before the surgery.
Surgery received EUA from FDA
The surgery received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) on New Year’s Eve, the statement said.
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The USFDA granted the EUA through its Extended Access or Compassionate Use provision, which is used when a product, in this case, a genetically modified pig’s heart, suffers from a serious or life-threatening medical condition. The only option available to the patient.
Griffith, MD of UMSOM, who surgically transplanted the pig heart into the patient, the statement said it was a successful surgery and one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis. There are not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients, he said.
He said doctors at UMSOM were optimistic that the first surgery in the world would provide an important new option for patients in the future.
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Xenotransplantation, the process of transplanting animal organs, could potentially save thousands of lives, but carries a unique set of risks, including the possibility of triggering a dangerous human reaction. Immediate rejection of the organ, with potentially fatal consequences to the patient, may be triggered by an immune response.
Xenotransplants were first tried in the 1980s. However, this was largely abandoned after the famous case of Stephanie Fay Beauclair in California, a baby girl born with a fatal heart condition, and received a baboon heart transplant, but her immune system as She had died within a month of the procedure. Rejected the alien heart.
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