• Surgeons at the University of Maryland have transplanted heart of a genetically-modified pig into a 57 year old patient
  • The experimental, desperate surgery marks the first successful procedure of its kind
  • Procedure took nine hours, whereby doctors replaced man’s heart with that from a one year old pig
  • Patient is currently on an ECMO machine but is breathing on his own, without a ventilator
  • Organ transplants from pigs are more common due to the speed at which their organs grow
  • Comes amid massive waitlists for organ transplants across the globe