"I felt my future was utterly bleak back then," he said. "My life seemed set in stone, with no glimmer of hope in sight."

With encouragement from his family, Zhang turned to Xijing Hospital for help. The medical team performed a successful xenogeneic kidney transplant using gene-edited pig organs on Zhang on April 23.

Given the patient's complex underlying conditions and the relatively thin vessel walls of the gene-edited pig kidney, the surgical team adopted a precise vascular anastomosis technique.

The transplanted kidney immediately turned pink and started producing urine the moment blood flow was restored, with no signs of rejection. The patient's urine output reached 12,000 milliliters on the day of surgery.

With the help of the nursing team, Zhang has steadily recovered post-surgery, and his new kidney is stable.