Enlarge / The transplant team with the replacement heart. (credit: The transplant team with the replacement heart. )
On Wednesday, the University of Maryland Medical Center announced that David Bennett, the first human to receive a pig heart transplant , died on Tuesday, March 8. His death comes roughly two months after the transplant; the cause of dying wasn’t specified.
The particular university’s statement is short upon details, and those will be critical for understanding the prospects for future transplants of this sort. Bennett was in very poor health at the time of the transplant, with his heart requiring mechanical assistance to keep him alive, so there are many potential explanations for his death that have nothing to do with the transplant. All the university is revealing is that the particular organ was not immediately rejected by Bennett’s immune system and that his health had started declining several days prior to his death.
Understanding typically the causes of his death is critical because Bennett will not be this last human to receive a pig organ. Shortly after their transplant, a different group published results from an early clinical trial using hearts from the same genetically engineered pigs. In this case, the hearts were transplanted into brain-dead individuals rather than being used to keep someone alive, but the test clearly represented a step toward normal transplants.
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