Patient with pig kidney discharged from clinic

“This moment, being able to leave the hospital with one of the best health reports I’ve had in a long time, is something I’ve wanted for years,” 62-year-old Rick Slayman said, the doctors said. “Now it has become reality.”

This day marks a new beginning not only for him, but also for many other people who were waiting for a kidney transplant. According to the hospital, the man, who suffers from a life-threatening kidney disease, had the genetically modified organ implanted on March 16.

The 62-year-old is recovering well and will now continue his recovery at home with his family, the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday (local time).

Pigs are very suitable as donors
Research into the so-called xenotransplantation has been conducted for a long time. Pigs are particularly suitable as donors because their metabolism is comparable to that of humans. In order to use such organs, the genetic composition of the donor animals must, among other things, be changed. Otherwise, transmission to humans would result in an immediate rejection response.

Worries about rejection
The 62-year-old also showed signs of rejection on the eighth day after surgery, the New York Times wrote, citing one of the doctors. The immune response was slowed down with medication. “It was a rollercoaster ride the first week,” the doctor admitted. However, the man responded to the treatment like patients who had received organs from human donors.

Most recently, two critically ill patients at University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, had pig hearts implanted as replacement organs in recent years. Both died weeks after the operation.