Key Points
Surgeons in New York have removed a pig kidney less than two months after transplanting it into Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman with kidney failure who also needed a mechanical heart pump..
The team behind the transplant says there were problems with the heart pump, not the pig kidney, and that the patient is in stable condition.. Pisano was facing heart and kidney failure and required routine dialysis..
She wasnt eligible to receive a traditional heart and kidney transplant from a human donor because of several chronic medical conditions that reduced the likelihood of a good outcome...
In a statement provided to WIRED, Pisanos medical team explained that they electively removed the pig kidney on May 2947 days after transplantafter several episodes of the heart pump not being able to pass enough blood through the transplanted kidney..
Like traditional transplant patients, Pisano needed to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent her immune system from rejecting the donor organ.. The kidney came from a pig genetically engineered by Virginia biotech company Revivicor to lack a gene responsible for the production of a sugar known as alpha-gal..
