Six weeks after the transplant, the man died, becoming the second person in medical history to receive a pig heart transplant.
About his death reported at the University of Maryland Medical Center. 58-year-old Lawrence Fawcett lived with a modified pig organ for 6 weeks, from September 20. How wrote our publication, he was diagnosed with the last stage of heart failure. Traditional transplantation was contraindicated for the man due to concomitant diseases.
In the first month after the transplant, Fawcett showed no signs of rejection. He “learned to walk” again and did physical therapy. However, a few days before death, a rejection reaction began. Psychologically, the husband was ready for this, says his wife Ann Fawcett:
“He knew his time with us was limited, and this was his last chance to do something for others. He never imagined that he would live with this for so long, and provide so much data for the xenotransplantation program (transplantation from one species to to another)”.
Bartley Griffith, a surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, says:
“Mr Fawcett’s final wish was that we make the most of this experience so that others can have a guaranteed chance of receiving a new heart when a human organ is not available.”
Doctors plan to conduct a thorough analysis to determine factors that need to be prevented during future transplants. This is the second case of xenotransplantation at this medical institution. For the first time, doctors transplanted a modified pig heart in 2022 to David Bennett, who lived for two months after the operation.
One hundred thousand Americans are on the waiting list for organ transplants. An acute shortage of donors has prompted scientists to study xenotransplantation – the use of animal organs for humans. The second pig-to-human heart transplant took place on September 20. Navy veteran Lawrence Fawcett was diagnosed with end-stage heart failure and deemed “unsuitable” for a human heart transplant. He had no hope left. Thus, the decision to transplant a porcine heart represented “the only option.”
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