The first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig has died, two months after the ground-breaking experiment at the Maryland hospital, in USA
David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday and Doctors didn't give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.
Bennett's son praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, saying the family hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.
"We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort," David Bennett Jr. said in a statement.
Doctors for decades have sought to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Bennett, a handyman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was a candidate for this newest attempt only because he otherwise faced certain death — ineligible for a human heart transplant, bedridden and on life support, and out of other options.
After the Jan. 7 operation, Bennett's son told said his father knew there was no guarantee it would work.
At first the pig heart was functioning, and the Maryland hospital issued periodic updates that Bennett seemed to be slowly recovering. Last month, the hospital released video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed while working with his physical therapist.
Bennett survived significantly longer with the gene-edited pig heart than one of the last milestones in xeno transplantation — when Baby Fae, a dying California infant, lived 21 days with a baboon's heart in 1984.
"We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end," Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement.
