The heart, one of the strongest and most sensitive organs of our body, is also pregnant with many diseases that are extremely difficult to cure. Today, although methods such as artificial heart transplantation have become widespread, no solution brings as fruitful results as the healthy state of our heart.
In order to overcome this problem, a way of transplanting from other creatures with hearts most suitable for human anatomy is sought. In January 2022, this search brought a tangible result for the first time; David Bennett, a 57-year-old heart patient living in Maryland, USA, was transplanted a genetically modified heart from a pig. Bennett died 2 months after the transplant, the cause of which could not be determined, and experts suggested that the cause in the first place could be the virus.
The cause of death of the first person to be transplanted with a pig heart was determined as heart failure, not “organ rejection”:
The body of David Bennett, who had to live depending on a machine for 8 months before the genetically modified pig heart was transplanted, could not accept the human heart due to his intense heart attack history, according to the statements. In other words, even if an extremely hard-to-find, hard-to-transplant human heart was implanted, Bennett’s risk of death would not seriously disappear.
Experts transplanted a genetically modified heart developed in a pig instead of a human heart into Bennett’s body on January 7, 2022. Thus, it was thought that the patient’s vital problems would be solved and the situation of putting another human heart at risk was eliminated. In addition, this transplant was a first in the history of the world; lit a glimmer of hope for the solution of problems such as heart failure.
However, when the calendars showed March 8, 2022, Bennett sadly passed away. As doctors investigated the cause of his death, suspicions centered on viruses found in the heart or organ rejection. According to the latest study results, published June 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the patient’s cause of death was heart failure, not both. So Bennett’s body; The body of the first human to have a pig heart transplanted did not actually reject the pig heart.
So what does this mean?
It focuses on a few possibilities that caused Bennett’s death and whose number is less than in the past. One of them is that drugs given to prevent organ rejection cause heart failure. From the team Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin “We’re still trying to figure out what went wrong. We don’t have a single answer. “But we don’t see it as a setback,” he said.
Stating that they will make changes in practices and techniques in the future, experts see Bennett’s observations as “progress” in the ability to transplant genetically modified heart and similar critical organs from other living things to humans. Although the patient died, in this case, science gained ground and the door was opened to the discovery of methods that would perhaps save the lives of millions of people.
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