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This is the beginning of a groundbreaking operation.
There is a pig on the operating table in Baltimore, USA.
Bartley Griffith, Surgeon
“The donor animal was very stable.
The organ looks perfect.
Good size.
The extraction went as planned, and now the heart is in a storage box.
Until our action. "
The animal's heart was removed, which a medicine company in the US state of Virginia genetically adapted to humans.
Four days later, the organ is moved to another operating room.
Here lies David Bennett, a 57-year-old man with life-threatening heart disease.
Bartley Griffith, Surgeon
“We started operating the patient around 8:30 am.
He had had a heart operation before, so it took a while to prepare to remove his heart and replace it with the animal's heart. "
The operation takes eight hours. The heart of the animal is the patient's last hope, for him it is a matter of life and death. The actual transplant begins in the late afternoon. For some time now, scientists have been trying to breed organs in pigs that can be used by humans - in addition to hearts, also kidneys or lungs. However, the history of these so-called xenotransplants has been marked by setbacks. But this time it seems to be working - at least for the time being.
Bartley Griffith, Surgeon
“
We seem to have passed what we call
' hyperacute
rejection phase'
. We have usually seen this in the case of animal organs that had not been specially prepared. So we have a good feeling this time. So we are now preparing for the next attack on the organ. We know that the pig heart will be attacked by different
'
soldiers'
in
our body. Various actors in the immune system can disable it. We have developed a treatment, in addition to the genetic adaptation of the organ to the human being, to prevent this. "
The patient was given a drug that had not yet been approved to prevent the organ from being rejected.
Bartley Griffith, Surgeon
“He's awake.
He is recovering and talking to his caregivers and we hope he continues to recover. "
Nobody knows how long the experiment will last.
But the transplant gives David Bennett hope, as does thousands of people around the world who are longingly waiting for a donor organ.