Surgeons at New York City-based NYU Langone Health performed the first combined mechanical heart pump and organ transplant surgery and implanted the second gene-edited pig kidney in the world.
The 54-year-old woman from New Jersey had heart failure and end-stage kidney disease. She was not a candidate for heart and kidney transplant because of several chronic conditions that reduced the likelihood of a good outcome.
She became the second person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney, and the first to include a pig's thymus gland to aid against rejection.
There have been no documented cases of anyone with a mechanical heart pump who also received an organ transplant of any kind, an April 24 system news release said.
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