Surgeons remove pig kidney transplant from woman

Enlarge (credit: Courtesy of NYU Langone)

Surgeons in New York have removed a pig kidney less than two months after transplanting it into Lisa Pisano, a 54-year-old woman with kidney failure who also needed a mechanical heart pump. The team behind the transplant says there were problems with the heart pump, not the pig kidney, and that the patient is in stable condition.

Pisano was facing heart and kidney failure and required routine dialysis. She wasn’t eligible to receive a traditional heart and kidney transplant from a human donor because of several chronic medical conditions that reduced the likelihood of a good outcome.