Second person to receive experimental pig heart transplant dies nearly six weeks after procedure
Second person to receive experimental pig heart transplant dies nearly six weeks after procedure
Lawrence Faucette, the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig heart in a transplant, has died six weeks after the experimental procedure. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the experimental procedure had been performed, said the heart began to show signs of rejectio...
Lawrence Faucette, the second living person to receive a genetically modified pig heart in a transplant, has died six weeks after the experimental procedure. The University of Maryland Medical Center, where the experimental procedure had been performed, said the heart began to show signs of rejection in recent days.
“Mr. Faucette’s last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience, so others may be guaranteed a chance for a new heart when a human organ is unavailable. He then told the team of doctors and nurses who gathered around him that he loved us. We will miss him tremendously,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, clinical director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a statement. Griffith had performed the experimental surgery.
Noble dude
Old men planting trees.
Honestly. He's helping pave the way so that people who have heart issues could potentially have replacements one day. Not just old dudes, but kids too.
Even if pig hearts never pan out, he got 6 more weeks with his loved ones.
That's a nice metaphor.
friendly reminder that you do not need to be old to plant trees. If you have a choice to take part in a scientific study, please do. Its usually quite easy.
personally for me it was a double blind study about tapering from steroids. so a month of tapering (or not, idk, it was blind), and then a few phone calls over 6 months.
Humanity thanks him for his sacrifice
Poisoned trees
My grandpa had a pig heart valve, and that thing lasted way longer than its warranty suggested. Yeah, he was told up front it would last ten years, but he got more out of it.
A lot of people think that regular human transplants are problem free but the vast majority of them are rejected by the receiver. If it’s for a life saving procedure it can only extend the life span by so much…
My dad had a double lung transplant several months ago...we were told by his transplant team that, with transplants, rejection is a "when", not an "if". However, if caught early enough, the docs can do an incredible amount to combat rejection.
I’m just curious if you have data behind this?
My understanding is that rejection related deaths in solid organ transplant recipients is only ~18% and that it is actually trending downward.
It's tough, these folks are often already in multiorgan failure because those organs were trying to hold up for their failing heart. So now you've got shot kidneys and lungs but a brand new heart to try and hold up those failing organs. Then you end up right back into heart failure.
I don't want people to see this as a failure.
Experiments are how we gain new information to try better the next time.
Ultimately these experiments are reserved for people who are ineligible for traditional heart transplants. This person was granted an extra six weeks with their family which is easy to overlook but the family likely cherished every moment.
I guess we'll have to wait a bit to find out what killed him. The first person died due to several things like his condition and the heart had a pig virus.
The pathogen issue is a real hurdle to overcome. I am wondering if we will get viable 3D printed hearts before we get viable transplants from other species.
3D-printed or stem-cell grown so they’re just new, hot-swappable copies of our own organs, minus defects thanks to CRISPR 🤯
Griffith had performed the experimental surgery
Fitting name
?
This is what OP is talking about: Griffin