In 1997, this Indian doctor tried pig heart transplant, was jailed
US doctors transplant full, live pig heart into human patient
The patient, Maryland resident David Bennett, is doing well three days after the surgery, the university's medical center said on Monday, as doctors who performed the operation revealed the transplanted heart was working normally and creating the pulse and pressure associated with the human heart. The surgery took place on Friday and took about eight hours.
Although the patient is still connected to a heart-lung bypass machine which was keeping him alive before the operation, doctors said the new heart is doing most of the work and there are no signs of rejection as of now. He is expected to be taken off the machine on Tuesday.
"We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future," Dr Bartley P. Griffith, the lead surgeon in the breakthrough achievement said, while foreseeing a solution to organ shortage crisis in the long run.
While some pig organs and cells, notably its heart valve and skin, have been used in humans before, this is the first time a full porcine heart has been transplanted into a human. The pioneer in this field of transplanting animal organs -- called xenotransplantation -- is Pakistani-American Dr Mohammed Mohiuddin, a graduate of Karachi's Dow Medical College, who with Dr Griffith set up UMSOM's Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program and was part of the surgery team.
"This is the culmination of years of highly complicated research to hone this technique in animals with survival times that have reached beyond nine months. The FDA used our data and data on the experimental pig to authorize the transplant in an end-stage heart disease patient who had no other treatment options," Dr. Mohiuddin said, adding that the successful procedure provided valuable information to improve the potentially life-saving method in future patients.
Doctors had to go in for a porcine heart transplant rather than a conventional one because Bennett's condition did not allow him to qualify for a human transplant. He had been admitted to the hospital more than six weeks earlier with life-threatening arrythmia and was connected to a heart-lung bypass machine, called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), to remain alive, the university said. In addition to not qualifying to be on the transplant list, he was also deemed ineligible for an artificial heart pump due to his arrhythmia.
He then consented to a porcine transplant even after being told of the risks. “It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” he said the day before the surgery. According to Dr Griffith, when briefed about the unprecedented nature of the procedure, Bennett joked, "Well, will I oink?"
Bennett won praise from doctors and administrators for his do or die decision. "We appreciate the tremendous courage of this live recipient, who has made an extraordinary decision to participate in this groundbreaking procedure to not only potentially extend his own life, but also for the future benefit of others," Dr Mohan Suntha, President and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical System said.
=================================================
In 1997, this Indian doctor tried pig heart transplant, was jailed
===========================================
Pig heart transplant: Not many are buying the Assam doctor's story yet
Not many are buying the Assam doctor's story yet.
- RUBEN BANERJEE
- Guwahati January 15, 1997
- ISSUE DATE: January 15, 1997
- UPDATED: April 16, 2013 11:54 IST
Or so Dr Dhani Ram Baruah says. "Medical science has taken a giant leap forward," exults Baruah, the head of the Dhani Ram Baruah Heart Institute outside Guwahati. Few share Baruah's excitement. Xenotransplantation, or animal-to-human transplant, has never worked on the heart.
No one has yet figured out how to stop the
human body's immune system from waging a war against animal hearts, a
process called rejection.
While researchers explore the molecular
world for clues to stop the immune system, Baruah has a simple solution
literally. It's a secret solution of chemicals that blinds the immune
system, he says. Saikia's heart was treated with the magic solution for
30 minutes, washed and then implanted in a 15-hour operation, Baruah
explains.
So does a pig's heart beat in the dying Saikia? "It's a
hoax... cheap publicity," fumes Assam's Health Minister Dr Kamala
Kalita. "No pig's heart was implanted in the first place." Indeed Baruah
signed a statement saying he had done no transplant, but he alleges the
confession was forced from him. "They threatened to shut down my
hospital if I did not comply."
| "If the present heart shows signs of failing I will have another pig heart implanted." Dr Dhani Ram Baruah |
Unfortunately,
no one in the medical fraternity believes him either. "It sounds like
something out of a dream," laughs N.K. Mehra, head, department of
histocompatibility and immunogenetics, All India Institute of Medical
Sciences, New Delhi. If something fools the immune system, the diverse
triggering mechanisms somehow find a way around.
"I would be
very, very sceptical," says William Baldwin, a xenotransplantation
researcher at John Hopkins University in the US, where one of the
world's top teams hasn't got beyond getting pig's hearts into baboons.
And these are pigs genetically engineered to reduce rejection; Dr
Baruah's pigs are your ordinary porkers. Experiments on human beings
stopped after Baby Fae, a two-week-old baby in the US, died within three
weeks in 1984 after her heart was replaced with a baboon's heart.
Little
wonder then, that Dr Baruah is being termed the medical fraternity's
Ramar Pillai, the man who held a nation in thrall last year when he
claimed to make fuel from water. But Dr Baruah is no small-town hick.
He's a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK, and was joined
in the operation by Dr Jonathan Ho, a cardiac surgeon from the Prince
of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong.
Saikia in intensive care: the transplant has led to questions of medical ethicsEthics raise their inconvenient head again. The most pointed question about xenotransplantation may not be whether it can be done but whether it should be done. Deadly new viruses could spread to humans from animals, much as AIDS moved from monkeys. "This is totally against the ethics of medical science," says Mehra.
The good doctor is undaunted. "To hell with controversies," he says angrily. "I will go ahead with what I am supposed to do." Back in the intensive care ward, Saikia is in critical condition. What if he dies? Baruah doesn't blink: "If his present heart shows signs of failing, I will have another pig heart implanted." Simple.
No comments:
Post a Comment