A U.S. man, David Bennett, who was the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig, has died two months after the groundbreaking experiment.
Bennett, 57, was reported to have died on Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where the surgery was performed.
The doctors who didn’t give the exact cause of Bennett’s death, said his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.
Persecondnews recalls that two months ago, surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, transplanted a genetically-modified pig’s heart into Bennett’s body, in a 9-hour surgery.
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Bennett was suffering from terminal heart failure and was too sick to qualify for a human transplant.
Surgeons subjected the pig’s heart to gene-editing in order to remove sugar in its cells that may cause the human body to reject it.
After the surgery, Bennet was able to breathe on his own though he was connected to a heart-lung machine that helped his new heart pump blood around his body.
Meanwhile, Bennett’s son has 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.
“We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end,” David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
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