17 people die in the U.S. each day waiting for an organ transplant<\/a>, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. Because pig organs are more readily available, doctors envision a future in which these operations are as common as a hip replacement. <\/p>\n\n\n\nBut at this early stage, the Food and Drug Administration has only approved xenotransplants for patients on the verge of death with no other options. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like Bennett Sr., Lawrence Faucette qualified for a pig heart because he was dying of heart failure. Ann Faucette said that after the surgery, her husband was able to play cards and do physical therapy on an exercise bike. It was a contrast to the day before the surgery, when his heart had stopped and needed to be revived with an internal defibrillator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re having full-on conversations. We\u2019re watching football,\u201d Ann said. \u201cIt\u2019s like normal life, as normal as it can be in a hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She focused on the positives: \u201cI was in denial. This was going to work. He was going to get better. He was going to come home,\u201d Ann said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her two sons, now 29 and 31, \u201csaw that the end could be at any point, so they made sure that they told Larry how they felt,\u201d she added \u2014 that they loved him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At her husband\u2019s request, Ann bought a new chair for their house in Frederick, Maryland, in preparation for his return. The day it was delivered, she learned his condition had worsened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhile I\u2019m waiting for the chair, I get the call that they want to put Larry on ECMO,\u201d she said, referring to a life-support device.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He died of transplant rejection roughly two weeks later, less than six weeks after the surgery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His doctors said Faucette\u2019s recovery was complicated by the fact that his strength had declined shortly before the operation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two xenotransplants after that followed a similar pattern: After surgery, the patients began to feel much better, then suddenly worsened after several weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brittany Harvill\u2019s mother, Lisa Pisano, received a genetically modified pig kidney in April. Within a week, she had noticeably improved, Harvill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShe\u2019s like, \u2018I feel great.\u2019 You could see the color in her face,\u201d she said. \u201cShe looked like a whole new person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before the surgery, Pisano could hardly walk due to shortness of breath and extreme fatigue. She had heart and kidney failure, so her surgery was more complicated than the others: Doctors implanted a mechanical heart pump eight days before the pig kidney. After the surgery, Pisano seemed more alert than ever, according to Harvill. She FaceTimed her grandchildren from the hospital, watched cooking shows and hung out with her daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would bring pictures and then we would talk about what the kids were up to,\u201d Harvill said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the demands of the transplant proved too much for Pisano\u2019s other organs. Doctors prescribed blood-pressure medication, but it ultimately led to the rejection of the kidney. Pisano died in hospice care on July 7, around 12 weeks after the transplant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvill said her mom was confident in her decision, but she still wishes Pisano had lived long enough to see her granddaughter, Olivia, go off to kindergarten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne thing that upsets me is that my mom would have loved to be there for that,\u201d she said through tears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harvill believes the kidney transplant \u201c100% would have worked\u201d had it not been for her mom\u2019s heart issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow I think the doctors definitely know, people that are as sick as my mom maybe aren\u2019t the best people to do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, the surgeons who\u2019ve done the xenotransplants and other experts in the field say these first four patients were not ideal candidates, since those on death\u2019s door are likely to be too weak to support a new organ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we could choose patients who are much more likely to do well, then we\u2019d get a better idea about how successful it\u2019s going to be,\u201d said Dr. David Cooper, a physician investigator of transplant surgery at the Massachusetts General Research Institute, who did not perform any of the operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for the FDA to approve such a transplant in a healthier patient, Cooper said, the agency wants to see more consistent one-year survival in studies done in animals. Privately, doctors had hoped that would be the case for the human patients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe hoped for six months, and maybe a year. Out of ignorance, we felt our animal data supported that. We actually thought we\u2019d do better in the humans,\u201d said Dr. Bartley Griffith, clinical director of the cardiac xenotransplantation program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who operated on Faucette and Bennett Sr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only xenotransplant patient who recovered enough to return home was Rick Slayman, who received a pig kidney at Massachusetts General Hospital in March. He had terminal kidney disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Slayman\u2019s family declined to be interviewed. According to his surgeon, Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, the dialysis Slayman had required before the transplant was no longer needed afterward, and his only struggle was climbing the three flights of stairs to his apartment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, Slayman died less than eight weeks after his surgery, from what doctors suspect was a fatal arrhythmia. An autopsy showed that his heart disease was more advanced than his doctors had thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe autopsy didn\u2019t show any rejection or any abnormality in the kidneys, so in terms of transplant, we think this was successful,\u201d said Kawai, who directs the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplant Tolerance at Mass General.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bennett, Faucette and Harvill families do not regret their loved ones\u2019 participation in the experimental transplants. Each saw any extra time as a gift, and they remain optimistic about xenotransplantation\u2019s potential. Harvill compared the situation to the first human heart transplant in 1967. That patient died after 18 days, but thousands of such transplants are now performed in the U.S. each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The families are also aware of how much doctors learned from each surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe excitement in their voices and on their faces when they talk about the data that Larry was able to give them \u2026 it makes me grateful,\u201d Faucette said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On her wedding anniversary, she baked around 500 cookies for the hospital\u2019s nursing staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Robert Montgomery, who did Pisano\u2019s surgery and directs the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said many people on the transplant waiting list are interested in a xenotransplant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many people call my office every week who want this. That\u2019s what I think is underappreciated, is how desperate people are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the researchers are eager to try another transplant as soon as they can find the right candidate and get FDA approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are at a place now where we feel 100% better informed,\u201d Griffith said. \u201cWhether that\u2019ll translate to our next patient living a year, we\u2019re not sure, but we moved from total ignorance to a really good idea of what our enemy is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
nbcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Bennett Jr. knelt by his bedside, phone in hand, anxiously awaiting a call that no one had ever received: The hospital was due to update him on whether his father was still alive after getting a new heart \u2014 from a pig. It was the first time any living human had received a pig […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":31604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784],"tags":[30277,28846],"class_list":["post-31603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-pig-organs","tag-transplant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31605,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31603\/revisions\/31605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}