Two months after having benefited, for the first time in the history of medicine, from a genetically modified pig heart transplant, David Benett, a 57-year-old American, finally died on Tuesday afternoon at the University Hospital Center of the state of Maryland.
David Benett suffered from a serious heart condition and agreed to undergo this experimental operation after being rejected from several waiting lists to receive a human heart.
He lived only thanks to the establishment of extracorporeal oxygenation.
“It was either death or this transplant.
I want to live.
I know it's quite risky, but it was my last option,” he said a day before the operation.
VIDEO.
United States: surgeons transplant the heart of a pig into a human, a world first
“Until the end, my father wanted to continue to fight to preserve his life and to spend more time with his family,” said his son, David Bennett Jr. “We were able to spend precious weeks together when he was recovering from his operation, weeks that we would not have had without this miraculous effort".
"No specific cause at this time"
Xenografts (transplants of an organ from one species into another species) are extremely delicate operations because the recipient's body generally rejects the transplanted organ very quickly.
If everything seemed "normal" after David Benett's operation two months ago and the donor pig had been genetically modified so as not to cause immediate rejection, the doctors already estimated that the patient's life prognosis was very uncertain.
Read alsoA pig's heart transplanted into a human: 5 minutes to understand a "prowess"
"The heart functioned very well for several weeks, with no signs of rejection," the hospital said.
Although “no specific cause of death could be identified at this time”, doctors should quickly carry out a thorough examination.
They then plan to publish the results of their analyzes in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, as is common in experimental operations.
“A brave and noble patient”
In a final tribute, Dr. Bartley Griffith, one of the surgeons who carried out the operation, hailed to the New York Times "a brave and noble patient who fought until the end".
“David Bennett was known to millions around the world for his courage and unwavering will to live,” he said, reporting that his medical team was devastated.
This advance in medicine has given hope to several hundred thousand patients with failing organs, since animal transplants could considerably reduce the waiting time for organ donation in the future.
It also paves the way for new clinical trials, according to the hospital.
Nearly 110,000 Americans are currently on the waiting list for organ transplants and more than 6,000 people die each year because organs are not available in the country.
