Surgeons Successfully Transplant a Pig Kidney into a Person
According to the National Kidney Foundation, the wait time for a kidney transplant spans several years due to a shortage of available organs. This scarcity could be rectified by organs from nonhuman animals, if such xenotransplant organs could prove viable. Now, research has taken a big step in that direction, experts say, as doctors at NYU Langone Transplant Institute claim they’ve performed the first-ever successful pig-to-human kidney transplant.
The surgery, which was into a person on life support with no detectable brain activity and occurred in September, attached a single kidney to a pair of blood vessels external to the patient’s body to enable observation, reports Reuters (the procedure was approved by the patient’s family). The case has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. After 54 hours, there were no signs of rejection, and the kidney was functioning well, Robert Montgomery, the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute and who performed the surgery, tells The New York Times. “A lot of kidneys from deceased people don’t work right away and take days or weeks to start,” he notes. “This worked immediately.”
Johns Hopkins transplant surgery professor Dorry Segev, who was not involved in the operation, tells the Times the xenotransplant is a “huge breakthrough,” adding that “It’s a big, big deal.”
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/surgeons-successfully-transplant-a-pig-kidney-into-a-person-69332
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