The first man to receive a genetically modified kidney transplant from a pig has been discharged from the hospital.
The 62-year-old was sent home on Wednesday, two weeks after the ground-breaking surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
Organ transplants from genetically modified pigs have failed in the past.
But the success of this procedure so far has been hailed by scientists as a historic milestone in the field of transplantation.
In the release, the hospital said the patient, Richard “Rick” Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts, had been battling end-stage kidney disease and required an organ transplant.
His doctors successfully transplanted a genetically-edited pig kidney into his body over a four-hour-long surgery on 16 March.
They said Mr Slayman’s kidney is now functioning well and he is no longer on dialysis.
In 2018, he had a human kidney transplant from a deceased donor, however it began to fail last year, and doctors raised the idea of a pig kidney transplant.
