A 53-year-old Alabama woman with kidney failure who waited eight years for an organ transplant has received a kidney harvested from a genetically modified pig, NYU Langone Health surgeons announced on Tuesday.

The patient, Towana Looney, went into surgery just before Thanksgiving. She was in better health than others who have received porcine organs to date and left the hospital 11 days after the procedure.

But Ms. Looney returned on Friday for a series of intravenous infusion treatments. Even before the transplant, she had high levels of antibodies that made it difficult to find a compatible human donor kidney.

The case will be closely watched by the transplant community, as success could speed initiation of a clinical trial, bringing pig transplants closer to reality and helping to solve the organ-supply shortage.

Since the transplant, Ms. Looney has been off dialysis, doctors said, and her blood pressure, stubbornly high for decades despite a cocktail of medications, is now controlled.

The kidney she received started making urine even before she woke from surgery, and blood tests show it is clearing creatinine, a waste product, from her body.