GUY’S FEELIN’ SWINE!
Gets kidney from pig
A 62-year-old man with end-stage kidney disease has been given a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig in a first-of-its-kind procedure, doctors revealed Thursday. Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston carried out the milestone kidney transplant last weekend.
The new kidney started producing urine soon after the four-hour surgery, according to doctors.
The patient, Richard “Rick” Slayman, is already walking around and will likely be discharged from the hospital soon, they added.
“The real hero today is the patient, Mr. Slayman, as the success of this pioneering surgery, once deemed unimaginable, would not have been possible without his courage and willingness to embark on a journey into uncharted medical territory,” said Joren C. Madsen, director of the hospital’s MGH Transplant Center.
“As the global medical community celebrates this monumental achievement, Mr. Slayman becomes a beacon of hope for countless individuals suffering from end-stage renal disease and opens a new frontier in organ transplantation,” Madsen said.
Slayma, who has been living with Type 2 diabetes for years, had previously received a kidney transplant from a human donor in December 2018 after being on dialysis for seven years.
But the kidney started to fail roughly five years later and the Weymouth, Mass., resident had to return to dialysis.
He raised his hand for the pig kidney transplant after experiencing ongoing dialysis complications that required him to be hospitalized every two weeks.
“I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” Slayma said in a statement.
Sow about that
Doctors are hailing Slayma’s transplant as a historic milestone in the emerging field of xenotransplantation — the implantation of an animal organ into a human.
Pig organs are relatively similar to human ones biologically, and scientists have been working to genetically modify the pigs, reducing the risks of rejection.
If the transplant is a continued success, doctors said such procedures could prove to be a solution to a worldwide organ shortage.
More than 100,000 people across the US are on standby for an organ transplant — and 17 people die each day while waiting, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
The Boston transplant comes after NYU Langone Health surgeons transplanted a pig kidney into a brain-dead man last year. The organ worked normally inside the man, Maurice “Mo” Miller, for at least two months.