Girl Has Heart Transplant Reversed After Ten Years

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Main Category: Transplants / Organ Donations
Also Included In: Cardiovascular / Cardiology;  Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 13 Apr 2006 - 7:00 PST

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Imagine having a heart transplant ten years ago, you find your body is starting to reject the transplanted heart after so much time, and doctors manage to reverse the whole process so your original heart is working inside you again. This is what happened to 12-year-old Hanna Clark, UK.

Hanna had a heart transplant when she was two years' old. She had to have a transplant because she had cardiomyopathy. This means her heart was too big, double its normal size - doctors said it would stop working within a year.

Her new heart took over the job of pumping blood around her body. Her own heart was not taken out - it stayed there.

When Hanna went for a check-up in November, 2005, doctors discovered that her body was rejecting her new heart (her body was beginning to treat the donor heart as a foreign/alien body).

So, doctors disconnected the donor heart and allowed the original one to take over the job of pumping blood around her body. Hanna is doing well, say her doctors. She may be in intensive care for quite a while. As this is a new area of medicine, it is hard to predict how long it will be before she can leave hospital.

As far as Hanna is concerned, she can't wait to get back to school, said her mother.

During her twelve years of life, Hanna has also had to fight lymph cancer. After successful treatment it is in remission.

The doctor who carried out her original heart transplant twelve years ago, Sir Magdi Yacoub, said that at the time he had hoped her own heart would recover. He liaised with two surgeons who carried out the transplant reversal. Sir Magdi, in a BBC programme, described this outcome as a 'happy ending'.

If a patient has cardiomyopathy, and that heart is allowed to rest, as in Hanna's case, it does now seem that it is able to recover.

Hanna's mother said she is grateful to the heart donor, whose organ saved her daughter's life when she was two.

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today