Four doctors and researchers from Aarhus University Hospital stand around the patient trying to generate imbalances in the heart. Or a defect which they can then treat. The patient is a pig, but for the heart specialist Steen Buus Kristiansen it is not the first time that he is performing an operation on one for the sake of research.
We want to be able to treat heart failure – for example poor pumping function – with a pacemaker. And if we cannot conduct this sort of research on humans, we use pigs instead as they closely resemble humans, says Steen Buus Kristiansen.
Regular supplier
The pigs come from a particular farm which has supplied the hospital in Skejby since 1982. It was originally chosen because it was – and still is – the closest farm to the hospital.
I supply about 1,000 pigs a year to the hospital, and about 1,500 to Danish Crown. I need to have a range of different- sized pigs so the hospital has something to choose between. Sometimes I’m asked to deliver within the space of 15 minutes, for example if the ‘patient’ dies on the operation table, says Lars Bo Kjeldsen, who took over the production of hospital pigs from his father in 2001.
There is a lot of hands-on work involved when supplying pigs for the operating table.
With a shovel and wheelbarrow
To be able to meet hospital requirements, Lars Bo Kjeldsen needs to spend more time on the pigs than other pig producers. The pigs live in older housing units. They are fed by hand and have a thick layer of straw on which to lie.
Each pig has to be absolutely healthy. They mustn’t have any cuts, blood blisters or any type of infirmity. Most pig producers would probably not be interested because there is so much manualwork. I spend three or four hours each day feeding the animals and mucking out. So it wouldn’t be profitable if it was an ordinary production unit, says Lars Bo Kjeldsen.
The experiment is the first of its kind in the world, and one of many groundbreaking experiments carried out at Aarhus University Hospital.