Pig kidney works for a record 271 days inside the body of American patient

A New Hampshire man, at death's door 1 ½ years ago, said Friday he could now have "decades" left after surviving a record 271 days with a transplanted pig kidney — in a procedure that could offer new hope to countless other patients.

When Tim Andrews and doctors first started discussing a pig transplant in late 2024, the patient with end-stage kidney failure said he was convinced death was near.

But Andrews, 68, wanted to try this procedure, if just for the findings and data it could yield for researchers.

"I didn't think I was going to live through it, to be honest. But I wanted to do it for humanity," he told NBC News on Friday.

"I realized, OK, I'm a dead man. I'm a dead man walking. So I said to myself, 'What have I done? What have I done with my life? This is an opportunity for me to do something that most people don't get an opportunity to do, and that's to help humanity.'"

He added that as he discussed the procedure with Dr. Leonardo Riella, he told him, '"this is about learning something. I don't care if I die, as long as you learn one thing (from this procedure).' "

Andrews' treatment at Mass General Brigham in Boston marked a significant step forward in xenotransplantation, the transplantation of living organs from one species into another, according to findings published Thursday in The Lancet medical journal.

Andrews, a retired grocery store manager from Barrington New Hampshire, was 66 when he received the pig kidney on Jan. 25, 2025.

The case shows that a transplanted pig kidney can safely support renal function "while also serving as a bridge" to a subsequent transplant with a human kidney, the study authors wrote.

Over the following 271 days he needed no dialysis before receiving a human transplant, according to a statement from Mass General.

"His case represents the longest dialysis-free survival following porcine kidney xenotransplantation in a living human and the first transition to human kidney transplantation," the hospital said.

Andrews has reacted well to receiving a human donor kidney.

"We could be talking decades (of life expectancy)," said the father of three children between the ages of 40 to 46. "It's running perfect. I mean, the thing is perfect."

The past few years have given him new appreciation for the "little things in life."

He now relishes daily acts of smelling flowers, swimming, riding a bike and fishing.

"Every day I wake up. I'm like, (this is) another (extra) day because I should have been dead a year ago or more," Andrews said.

The patient knows nothing about the kidney donor, other than he was a young man who enjoyed blueberries — a fruit Andrews didn't care much for in his first six decades of life, but now has developed a strange affinity for.

"To know that somebody died way younger and I'm living because of it, that's pretty tough," said an emotional Andrews, his voice trailing off. "I have this new kidney in me and I need to honor it."

Xenotransplantation could soon become a lifesaving option, according to Riella, the study's lead author .

"The organ shortage is the greatest crisis we have right now in transplantation," wrote Riella. "We know that the best treatment option for patients with end-stage kidney disease who have developed renal failure is transplantation, but we simply don't have enough human organs to transplant in a timely manner."

More than 100,000 people are on the national transplant waiting list . The vast majority are waiting for a kidney.

Towana Looney lived with a pig kidney for a then-record 130 days before it was removed in April 2025 because her body began rejecting it.

The 55-year-old is still alive and on dialysis in the hopes of finding a matching human donor, a representative for NYU Langone Health said Friday.

For patients like Andrews, using pig kidneys could help buy them enough time to find a human donor.

"Our vision is that xenotransplantation could help address this gap — initially as a bridge to get patients off dialysis while they wait for a human donor kidney, and potentially, as we establish long-term safety and durability, as a destination therapy in its own right," Riella said.

There could be a day in the near future when pig kidney transplants could be regularly used as a bridge to human donors.

"When we talked the first time and I met Dr. Riella, they were talking about at least 10 years, that it's going to be at least 10 years before this becomes viable — now they're talking about five years or less than five years," Andrews said, adding he "may live to see it" become a common procedure.

Mass General performed the world's first pig-to-human kidney transplant in 2024.

Richard "Rick" Slayman lived for 52 days before dying of cardiac causes unrelated to the transplan t, the hospital said.

"I read about it and they told me he died, but he died of other causes, the kidney was still working," Andrews said. "I said, 'Huh, you know what? I think this might work.' "

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com