In the first medical procedure of its kind, a New Jersey woman received a new heart pump along with a kidney and thymus gland from a pig.
Lisa Pisano, 54, had both heart failure and end-stage kidney disease, the latter of which required regular treatment with dialysis. However, she did not qualify for a traditional combined heart-kidney transplant because she had several chronic conditions that made her a poor candidate. There's a limited supply of human organs, so to qualify for multiple, a person has to meet certain criteria that suggest they'd have a good outcome.
