A pig's heart had been transplanted into a human body in a rare operation, but the effect of that unprecedented success did not last. A US citizen has died 40 days after the surgery, the report says.

In 2022, a pig's heart was transplanted in the same way into a man named David Bennett (57). He lived for two months after the operation before his heart also stopped working. Now the second operation has failed as well.

According to a report by the US news outlet CNN, the second patient who died was Lawrence Faucette (58). He underwent surgery on 20 September this year, when the pig's heart was transplanted into his body at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

At the end of the first month after the transplant, the pig's heart was seen to be working well. Recently, however, Lawrence's condition deteriorated rapidly. Within six weeks the heart stopped working completely and he died.

The process of transplanting an animal's organ into a human body is called xenotransplantation. Although medical scientists have carried out extensive research on it, the process has not yet been truly successful.

According to the US federal government, more than 113,000 people are on the organ transplant list, of whom more than 3,300 need a heart transplant. A group called Donate Life America says 17 people die every day in the United States without receiving an organ for transplant.

This report draws on CNN.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.