What risks will the "human-faced beast heart" bring to mankind when it appears in the human world?! I am a cardiothoracic surgeon, my main job at the moment is thoracic surgery, some time ago, someone sent me

What risks will the "human-faced beast heart" bring to mankind when it appears in the human world?!

I am a cardiothoracic surgeon, my main job is thoracic surgery, some time ago, someone sent me several videos, what is it? It's about the transplantation of pig hearts into people, which is also a very explosive news in the medical community in 2022, that a university in the United States did a pig heart transplant for a patient with heart failure.

Is there any talk that this is called "human face beast heart"? Man is still a human face, but the heart is the heart of an animal, but the "human face beast heart" is not a bad thing, it saved the life of this person, but also can't help but think, what kind of risk will this bring to human beings? If a person has a pig's heart in his body, does it bring great risks?

Human beings have been trying to study how to save people, about transplantation, a long time ago some people have tried to transplant some organs of pigs into the human body, in fact, not only transplant organs, in history, there are also animal blood transfusions into the human body, but due to strong rejection, not only did not save people, but made people die quickly.

There have been many long histories of organ transplantation into humans in pigs, including human heart valves – there is a kind of heart valve replacement called the biological valve. This is relatively good quality, less pain, this biological flap is made of pig aorta, and then transplanted into the human body, has been applied for many years, the original use of cattle aorta, and later due to mad cow disease, it was abandoned to cattle, and now mainly use pigs.

But this is the first time a pig's entire heart has been transplanted into a human body, so it's one of the biggest medical news of 2022.

Why is it possible to transplant a pig's heart to someone?

This involves the problem of the lack of transplanted donors, we have patients who need a heart, but there are too few donors who can provide a good healthy heart, the donor is generally unfortunate to die in a car accident, or the unfortunate death of other diseases, but there are many people waiting for the transplanted heart, and the amount of donation is far from enough, so this "human face beast heart" story has occurred.

The pig needed for surgery is not an ordinary pig, it is a genetically modified pig, it is genetically modified, just like we often say genetically modified food, we always feel that genetically modified food has a very great harm, may damage human health, but genetically modified pigs, in order to reduce rejection, at the same time, reduce the disease that pigs may get, infected to people.

We know foot-and-mouth disease, which is a plague that pigs, cattle and sheep will get, similar to the serious respiratory infection of human new crown or avian influenza, foot-and-mouth disease is easy to occur in pigs and cattle, not easy to occur in people, then people transplant pig hearts, will they also get this disease?

This is also one of the risks, we are working hard through genetic modification technology, these disease-prone genes are removed, so now that the pig heart has been transplanted into the human body, it has been a few days, and there is no news of failure at present, we hope that it can succeed, if it can be successful, it can greatly solve the situation of donor shortage.

Some people will say that this pig heart is transplanted into a person, is that person like a pig?

In fact, no, the function of the heart is relatively simple, the heart is equivalent to a water pump, the blood to the whole body to transport, there are not too many other functions, it is not like our liver and detoxification function, there are many digestive functions, so heart transplantation is relatively simple.

Transplanting a heart is relatively simple, the transplantation of other organs is not so easy, if you can use other organs for transplantation, you can save more people.

So when it comes to pig hearts, transplanted into people, how much harm will it bring to people? At present, this harm may not be large, first, this transplant itself occurs very little, not a large number of transplants; second, the cost of transplantable pig hearts is also very high, this transgenic pig must be in the laboratory, after strict gene editing, after birth also has to go through a very strict feeding channel, so the cost is very high, may be much higher than the unfortunate death of the healthy donor's heart cost is much higher, because it has to be farmed, and what we donate is basically free, Therefore, there are not many pig donors that can really be transplanted into humans.

With the development of future technology, it may be possible to replace all human organs with other animal organs, so many patients will be rescued, so pig heart transplantation to the human body is controversial, but at present at least to solve the patient's temporary life safety, if he does not do pig heart transplantation, he may die soon, this patient in the United States did pig heart transplantation, if there is a suitable human heart supply, he can also switch to the human heart, of course, in the future we may have a better artificial heart can be used for a long time, It can also be transplanted with an artificial heart.

Therefore, with the development of technology, previously incurable diseases or unimaginable things can gradually become a reality and can be well treated. I am Dr. Wang, welcome to follow me to learn more about health. @Medical Federation Media @Toutiao Health @Toutiao Health @Toutiao Qingyun Plan @Dr. Wang Jiyong #Heart Transplant #Health##Heart Disease# #心力衰竭 #