Lisa Pisano looks at photos of her dog after her surgeries at NYU Langone Health in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. Doctors transplanted a pig kidney into Pisano, who was near death, part of a dramatic pair of surgeries that also included a fix for her failing heart. In this photo provided by NYU Langone Health, surgeons operate on Lisa Pisano at the hospital in New York on April 12, 2024.
Pisano is recovering well, the NYU team announced Wednesday. She’s only the second patient ever to receive a pig kidney -- following a landmark transplantThis week, the 54-year-old grasped a walker and took her first few steps. Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone Transplant Institute, recounted cheers in the operating room as the organ immediately started making urine.Utah Jazz GM Justin Zanik is set for a kidney transplant TuesdayBut “we’re not off the hook yet,” cautioned Dr. Nader Moazami, the NYU cardiac surgeon who implanted the heart pump.“I have to congratulate them,” said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Mass General, who noted that his own pig kidney patient was healthier overall before the operation.
“It’s like being in a maze and you can’t find a way out,” Montgomery explained — until the surgeons decided to pair a heart pump with a pig kidney.With emergency permission from the Food and Drug Administration, Montgomery chose an organ from a pig genetically engineered by United Therapeutics Corp. so its cells don’t produce a particular sugar that’s foreign to the human body and triggers immediate organ rejection.