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© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.Surgeons perform second pig heart transplant, trying to save a dying man
By LAURAN NEERGAARD WASHINGTON©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
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Redemption
Good luck!
virusrex
Very important developments have been done in these kind of xenotransplants in the last few years, with better and better results much faster than what many people expected. Maybe in a few years it will become feasible to have them become much more common, which would be of great benefit, specially in countries like Japan where organ donation (even blood donation) is still terribly uncommon when compared with other developed countries.
wallace
Human organ heart transplants in Japan cost 80 million to 200 million yen. Pig hearts will not reduce the costs.
virusrex
It might, depending of the degree of development required to make it practical. Once strains of pigs developed solely for the purpose of transplants are available it becomes much less resource intensive to get specific pathogen free organs and greatly simplify the transplants, reducing the cost.
But of course the biggest advantage would be to get a much higher number of organs available, for many patients in Japan (and other countries with low donation numbers) 200 million yen to save their lives is still a much better option than not getting any organ.
opheliajadefeldt
Organ transplants have been happening for decades now, lets hope this could be another step forward. The very first heart transplant took place back in 1967 in SA by Surgeon, Christiaan Barnard. He used the same technique that was used by in the USA by a group of researchers developed in the 1950's. American surgeon Norman Shumway achieved the first successful heart transplant, in a dog, at Stanford University in California in 1958. Sadly for for Christiaan Barnard's patient, he died after 18 days from from double pneumonia, but his heart was working fine when he died.
Logical_Fallacy_Killer
Technology and science saves another human life. It's truely amazing. I hope he lives a long life.
Redemption
I would think that mechanical organs, especially a mechanical heart, with materials that do not trigger any immune reaction, would be easier to develop than a transgenic organ.
albaleo
I understand work is still being done on artificial hearts. There are devices that can be used temporarily until a transplant is performed, and other artificial devices that can perform some heart functions. But no fully performing artificial heart has been developed yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_heart
virusrex
Unfortunately the double pump action of the heart is not something that simple to reproduce continuously without problems eventually appearing (like clotting, lack of adaptation to physiological changes, etc)
There is an interesting article describing this with more detail.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/in-search-of-the-impossible-machine-the-artificial-heart/