Believe it or not: US surgeons successfully transplant pig's kidney to human

New York - The kidney was attached to blood vessels in a woman's upper leg, outside her abdomen

Surgeons in New York have successfully attached a pig's kidney to "the body of a woman" who was brain dead and found that the organ worked normally.

The kidney was attached to blood vessels in a woman's upper leg, outside her abdomen.

After the transplant, the kidney did what it was supposed to do, and was not rejected by the body.

"It had absolutely normal function," Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the surgical team at NYU Langone Health last month told the media. "It didn't have this immediate rejection that we had worried about."

The woman had wanted to donate her organs, but they were found unsuitable. Her family then agreed to the experiment and felt some good would come out of the test.

According to Dr Montgomery, the kidney started functioning normally, making urine and waste product creatinine “almost immediately.” As the organ functioned outside the body, it strongly indicated it would work inside as well, he added.

Dr Montgomery himself is a recipient of a human heart from a donor with hepatitis C. “I was one of those people lying in the ICU waiting and not knowing whether an organ was going to come in time,” he said.

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Almost a hundred thousand Americans are waiting for a kidney transplant and about a dozen die every day in the absence of the organ.

According to experts, the latest development will lead to the first experimental pig kidney or heart transplants in living persons in the future.