The world’s second recipient of a pig heart transplant, 58-year-old American Lawrence Fawcett, died approximately six weeks after the transplant.
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This was reported by the University of Maryland Medical Center in the United States.
It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Lawrence Fawcett, a 58-year-old patient with incurable heart disease who underwent the world’s second heart transplant from a genetically modified pig.
Fawcett suffered from end-stage heart failure and was hospitalized on September 14. Due to underlying health issues, several transplant centers deemed him unsuitable for traditional donor heart transplant surgery.
Shortly before the transplant, the man’s heart stopped and required resuscitation. In mid-September, the US Food and Drug Administration issued emergency approval for a pig heart transplant.
After the operation, Fawcett was able to live for about six weeks. During this time he made “significant progress”, spending time with his family and playing cards with his wife. However, in recent days, the first signs of transplant rejection have begun to appear. The University of Maryland calls this a major problem with traditional transplants, including human organs.
Surgeon Bartley Griffith said Fawcett’s last wish was for doctors to make the most of their experience “so that others can be guaranteed a chance at a new heart” if a traditional transplant is for some reason unavailable.
The husband’s wife, Ann Fawcett, said her husband knew he didn’t have long to live and knew the pig heart transplant was his last chance to do something for others.
He never thought he could live [зі свинячим серцем] so long and provide so much data for the xenotransplantation program,” she said.
The first porcine heart transplant was performed by University of Maryland staff in January 2022. They transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into 57-year-old David Bennett, who suffered from severe arrhythmia. Nearly two months after surgery, the man died from intravenous immunoglobulin, although the cause was initially thought to be porcine cytomegalovirus.
Source: Racurs
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