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A kidney transplanted from a pig has worked inside a patient for 271 days \u2013 the longest on record, say US doctors.<\/b><\/p>\n
Tim Andrews said the transplant gave him “hope” and spared him months of needing to go to hospital to have his blood filtered by a dialysis machine.<\/p>\n
The team at Mass General Brigham hospital say their work shows pig organs can be used as a “bridge” until a human transplant becomes available.<\/p>\n
But the pig organ eventually failed and was removed so Andrews needed a short bout of dialysis before a donor was found.<\/p>\n
Doctors and scientists are exploring xenotransplantation \u2013 using organs from other species \u2013 due to shortages of organs for transplants.<\/p>\n
In the US, around 100,000 people are waiting for a kidney while only 25,000 transplants occur each year. More than 7,000 people in the UK are on the kidney transplant list. <\/p>\n
Andrews was told it could take seven years to get to the top of the list, but that people live only five years, on average, on dialysis.<\/p>\n
“I had a little bit of a shortage of time\u2026 it becomes very depressing,” he said.<\/p>\n
But he described the idea of a pig transplant as “hope” and the “light at the end of the tunnel”.<\/p>\n
“Hope is the biggest thing, the chance to be free from the [dialysis] machine and live your life.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n