Earlier this spring, a woman in her 60s became the first to receive an HIV-positive to HIV-positive heart transplant. She suffered from advanced heart failure and received the donation, which happened simultaneously with a kidney transplant, during a four-hour surgery at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx. The woman spent five weeks recovering in the hospital and is currently being monitored by transplant physicians at Montefiore. In 2013, the HIV Organ Policy Equality Act enabled people living with HIV to donate their organs to HIV-positive recipients, but this is the first time this opportunity has been able to happen for heart [...]

During a surgery that took place in September 2021 at NYU Langone Health in New York City, a kidney that was grown in a genetically altered pig was transplanted into a human patient. The patient, who was brain dead and who’s family consented to the surgery, had the kidney attached to the blood vessels in the upper leg outside of the abdomen. It quickly began functioning normally and the entire procedure went better than expected. Although the patient was only followed for 54 hours post-surgery and the research behind the procedure has not been peer-reviewed or published in a medical journal, [...]