The procedure was carried out by a team of local scientists at the Chinese Air Force-affiliated Xijing Hospital in the country’s northwestern city of Xi’an earlier this month.
Read more: New immune system discovery could solve antibiotic-resistant bacteria problemThe xenotransplantation approach seeks to alleviate shortage of human organs, and could potentially provide a lifeline to people waiting in long queues because of a shortage of donors. Only four such transplants have been reported in the world before, with all cases from the US.
The Massachusetts General Hospital performed the world’s first pig kidney transplantation in March last year, but the 62-year-old recipient who was suffering from end-stage kidney disease died two months after the surgery. The hospital said it didn’t have any indication that the death was related to the transplant. The longest living recipient of a pig organ transplant is a woman from Alabama who underwent the procedure in November last year.
There were 89,792 patients waiting for kidney transplants in the US alone as of September last year, while only 27,332 transplants were performed a year before, according to data from the Health Resources & Services Administration.
Read more: Pope Francis in critical condition with early kidney failure but attends Mass as prayers pour in
In China, 130 million patients suffer from chronic kidney diseases, with 2% of them expected to enter the so-called end-stage. In all, there were 300,000 awaiting organ transplants, with only 20,000 operations performed every year, the People’s Daily reported.
“This groundbreaking case provides a new approach to the clinical treatment of patients with end-stage kidney disease,” the newspaper said, citing Dou Kefeng, a Chinese scientist who led the operation. It “confirmed the feasibility and effectiveness of xenotransplantation in clinical practice.”
