Genetically altered pig heart transplanted into a human for the second time
For only the second time in history, surgeons transplanted a heart from a genetically engineered pig into a human.
In a new test of xenotransplantation, a medical team at the University of Maryland Medical Center announced Friday that, for only the second time in history, it had transplanted a heart from a genetically engineered pig into a human.
The surgeons performed the eight-hour procedure Wednesday without complications. As of Friday afternoon, the organ recipient, a 58-year-old Navy veteran and former vaccine researcher at the National Institutes of Health named Lawrence Faucette, is awake, able to sit in a chair and breathe on his own, and his new heart is pumping without help from supportive devices, hospital officials said in a statement.
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