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Photo courtesy of Sanford Health via flickr
Surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported on Thursday that they had for the first time successfully transplanted kidneys from a genetically modified pig into the abdomen of a 57-year-old brain-dead man.
The announcement was the latest in a series of remarkable feats in organ transplantation. Earlier this month, surgeons at the University of Maryland transplanted a heart from a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old patient with heart failure. That patient is still alive and under observation.
In September, surgeons at NYU Langone Health attached a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a brain-dead individual who was being maintained on a ventilator. Though it remained outside the body, the kidney worked normally, making urine and creatinine, a waste product.
The U.A.B. surgery was reported in The American Journal of Transplantation, the first time a pig-to-human organ transplantation has been described in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
According to the surgical team, the pig kidneys started functioning and making urine after about 23 minutes and continued to do so...