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Cover Image, Volume 25, Issue 6
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
xenotransplantation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Reports
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.052
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1399-3089
pISSN - 0908-665X
DOI - 10.1111/xen.12485
Subject(s) - xenotransplantation , allotransplantation , economic shortage , transplantation , heart transplants , medicine , intensive care medicine , heart transplantation , surgery , linguistics , philosophy , government (linguistics)
The role of xenotransplantation in treatment of newborn infants with severe cardiac failure Xenotransplantation has previously and may in the future provide a therapeutic option for infants with severe cardiac failure. The first successful cardiac transplant in a newborn infant was, arguably, a cardiac xenograft from a baboon into Baby Fae. Today, most infants are treated by surgical reconstruction and few by allotransplantation because few donors of suitable size are available. In the near future, xenografts from pigs might address some of the shortage of human donors, allowing cardiac transplantation to be offered to more afflicted infants. At some point in the future, organogenesis, potentially using pigs as a biological system for coaxing differentiation of stem cells from an infant, might generate hearts for autotransplantation. If this last future is realized, xenotransplantation might be needed to support potential “autograft” recipients until organogenesis could be realized.