CBS NEWS
For the first time, surgeons at NYU Langone Health performed a combined mechanical heart pump and gene-edited pig kidney transplant, helping a 54-year-old woman with heart and kidney failure.
Before the two procedures, which took place earlier this month, New Jersey native Lisa Pisano faced heart failure and end-stage kidney disease that required routine dialysis, and she was not a candidate for a human transplant.
“I was pretty much done,” Pisano told CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, who is also a professor at NYU Langone. “I couldn’t go up the stairs. I couldn’t drive. I couldn’t play with my grandkids. So when this opportunity came to me I was taking it.”
Now, she says, she’s feeling “great today compared to other days.”
Dr. Robert Montgomery, NYU Langone Transplant Institute director, said she is currently “doing very well” in recovery.
