The world's second person to acquire a transplanted pig heart has died weeks after having the procedure.
Laurence Faucett, 58, died from heart failure on Monday (October 30), his Maryland doctor announced, almost six weeks after the experimental surgery.
Mr Faucett was turned down for a traditional heart due to his advanced health problems. He signed up for the experimental genetically modified pig heart on September 20, according to the Associated Press, and is only the second living person to receive the transplant.
Navy veteran Mr Faucett was a husband and father of two from Frederick, Maryland. He came to the University of Maryland School of Medicine Medical Center, in Baltimore, with a lack of further options and expressing a wish to spend more time with his family.In a statement released by the hospital, Faucette's wife, Ann, said her husband "knew his time with us was short and this was his last chance to do for others. He never imagined he would survive as long as he did."
Only a couple of weeks ahead of his death, in mid-October, he seemed to be standing and the hospital said he had been working hard in physical therapy to regain the strength needed to walk.
The hospital said the heart seemed healthy at the start but showed signs of rejection in the days before his death.Cardiac xenotransplant chief Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin has said the team will examine the issue with the heart as they continue to study pig organs.
The surgeon who led the transplant, Dr Bartley Griffith, said "Mr Faucette's last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience."
The Maryland team last year performed the world's first transplant of a heart from a genetically altered pig into a dying man named David Bennett. He survived two months before it failed, for reasons not entirely clear. Signs of a pig virus were later detected inside the organ, however.
Aside from these instances, ideas for animal-to-human organ transplants are not entirely novel. Attempts at them, which have been called xenotransplants, have failed for decades, as people's immune systems immediately destroyed the foreign tissue.
Scientists are now trying using pigs genetically modified to make their organs more humanlike. More than 100,000 people are currently on the nation's list awaiting transplants, most of which are kidneys, as it is predicted that thousands may die in the process.
