The first man to receive a pig kidney died over the weekend, nearly two months after undergoing the transplant.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, where 62-year-old Richard Slayman underwent the procedure, said there is “no indication” that his death was the result of the pig kidney failing. The man had previously received a transplanted kidney from a human, but it had to be taken out due to complications.
The surgery, known as a xenotransplantation, was seen as a medical breakthrough in helping address the major global organ donation shortage.
And the shortage is pretty significant, according to the data.
Every day, 17 people in the United States die waiting for an organ transplant, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration. Kidneys in particular are in high demand. An estimated 786,000 patients were living with kidney failure in 2021, but less than 25,000 received a transplant, the National Kidney Foundation reported.
Transplantation numbers have gone up since then, but organ donor proponents continue to argue that if more people donated one of their kidneys, operations requiring organs from genetically modified pigs would be less necessary.
But what kind of risks are involved in donating a kidney?
Northeastern Global News spoke with Dami Ko, an assistant professor of nursing at Northeastern and a transplant expert, to learn more about kidney transplantation and what could be done to address the donation shortage.
