In April, Ms. Pisano became the second person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig. Hers was a particularly complicated case: she suffers from heart and kidney failure and she received the organ only eight days after receiving a mechanical heart pump.
Ms. Pisano was at risk of dying without the heart pump, a device implanted in patients who need a heart transplant. But there is a critical shortage of available human donor kidneys, and her heart disease has made her ineligible to receive one.
She is the first known heart pump patient to receive an organ transplant of any type, NYU Langone Health officials said. Patients with kidney failure are usually ineligible to receive a heart pump due to the high risk of death.
The first patient to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig was Richard Slayman, 62, who underwent the procedure in March at Mass General Brigham in Boston.
He was well enough to go home from the hospital two weeks after surgery, but he suffered from complex medical problems and died within two months.