US surgeons perform world’s second pig heart transplant in bid to save dying man
- Navy veteran Lawrence Faucette was facing near-certain death from heart failure but other health problems meant he wasn’t eligible for a traditional transplant
- The team had done the first such operation last year on dying patient David Bennett, who survived for two months afterwards
Surgeons have transplanted a pig’s heart into a dying man in a bid to prolong his life – only the second patient to ever undergo such an experimental feat. Two days later, the man was cracking jokes and able to sit in a chair, Maryland doctors said Friday.
The 58-year-old Navy veteran was facing near-certain death from heart failure but other health problems meant he wasn’t eligible for a traditional heart transplant, according to doctors at University of Maryland Medicine.
“Nobody knows from this point forward. At least now I have hope and I have a chance,” Lawrence Faucette, from Frederick, Maryland, said in a video recorded by the hospital before Wednesday’s operation. “I will fight tooth and nail for every breath I can take.”
While the next few weeks will be critical, doctors were thrilled at Faucette’s early response to the pig organ.
“You know, I just keep shaking my head – how am I talking to someone who has a pig heart?” said Dr Bartley Griffith, who performed the transplant. He said doctors are feeling “a great privilege but, you know, a lot of pressure”.