What might have been considered impossible finally became a reality in the United States, where a group of surgeons successfully transplanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into a man.
Is about David bennett, 57, a patient who was about to lose his life due to a heart condition and who saw in the experimental procedure the last hope to survive his terminal illness.
“It was either dying or doing this transplant. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last option, ”Bennett said a day before entering the operating room where the transplant that has become a milestone in medicine was finally completed.
The U.S. medical regulator awarded the doctors at the Centro Medico de la University of Maryland a special dispensation to carry out the proceedings, on the grounds that Mr. Bennett would have otherwise died.
As they explained, the patient had already been considered ineligible for a human transplant, a decision doctors make when there is no hope that a patient will have a chance to survive due to poor health.
For the medical team that carried out the successful intervention, the transplant marks the culmination of years of research and could change lives around the world, as 17 people die every day in the US waiting for a transplant.
“People die all the time on the waiting list, waiting for organs. If we could use genetically modified pig organs, they would never have to wait, ”said Dr. Christine Lau, chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Source-elpopular.pe