Liver transplantIn 1992, a 35-year-old man at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center became the world's first recipient of a baboon liver transplant. Dr. John Fung with colleagues Drs. Andreas Tzakis and Satoru Todo performed the transplant operation. The patient was dying from hepatitis B. Although the patient died from a brain hemorrhage 71 days after the historic surgery, the field of xenotransplantation, or cross-species transplantation, was advanced considerably. A second xenotransplant operation was made on 10 Jan 1993 on a 62-year-old man who lived 26 days with the baboon's liver. No further xenotransplants are currently planned there, but xenotransplantation research remains a major focus of investigation at the university. |
