First person to receive heart transplant from pig dies after 2 months

A United States man who was the first person in history to receive a heart transplant from pig is dead.

He died two months after the ground-breaking experiment, the hospital that performed the surgery announced on Wednesday.

According to the hospital, the 57-year-old victim, David Bennett, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Doctors, however, did not give an exact cause of the man’s death, saying his condition had started deteriorating several days earlier.

Bennett’s son, who praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, said the family had hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.

READ ALSO: South African doctors successfully carry out first ever middle-ear transplant

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort.

“We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end,” David Bennett Jr. said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Bennett, a handyman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was a candidate for the newest attempt seeking to use animal organs for life-saving transplants.

His son told reporters that his father knew after the January 7 operation there was no guarantee it would work.

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