Heart Healing
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/07/14/hannah.clark.heart/index.html
This article is about a young girl who underwent heart transplant surgery nearly 11 years ago in which the doctors performed a procedure that wasn’t widely accepted in the day—they put the donor heart in along with her heart. The procedure is called a piggy back. The problem with her heart was that it wasn’t contracting at all and couldn’t supply the necessary pressure to supply the body with blood. The doctors were hoping that by allowing the heart to rest for the time, they could get it to heal on its own.
The only problem with the situation was that she had to be on continuous immunosuppressant that left her body vulnerable to attack. Over the next few years, the girl contract several diseases including cancer that left her both emotionally and physically depleted. Around 10 years after the transplant, the immunosuppressant stopped working properly and the body began rejecting the heart. Not exactly sure what to do, the doctors tried something that hadn’t been attempted yet—they took out the donor heart, theorizing that the heart would have healed itself over time by resting and would be able to take over its job.
The crazy thing was that it actually worked. After taking out the donor heart, the girl’s own heart began pumping and over the next couple years took over the job so well that she was recently cleared from the hospital and released with a clean bill of health. The miracle of the heart’s ability to heal and its vigorous ability to withstand almost anything if given the proper time baffles the medical community over and over again.
This article is about a young girl who underwent heart transplant surgery nearly 11 years ago in which the doctors performed a procedure that wasn’t widely accepted in the day—they put the donor heart in along with her heart. The procedure is called a piggy back. The problem with her heart was that it wasn’t contracting at all and couldn’t supply the necessary pressure to supply the body with blood. The doctors were hoping that by allowing the heart to rest for the time, they could get it to heal on its own.
The only problem with the situation was that she had to be on continuous immunosuppressant that left her body vulnerable to attack. Over the next few years, the girl contract several diseases including cancer that left her both emotionally and physically depleted. Around 10 years after the transplant, the immunosuppressant stopped working properly and the body began rejecting the heart. Not exactly sure what to do, the doctors tried something that hadn’t been attempted yet—they took out the donor heart, theorizing that the heart would have healed itself over time by resting and would be able to take over its job.
The crazy thing was that it actually worked. After taking out the donor heart, the girl’s own heart began pumping and over the next couple years took over the job so well that she was recently cleared from the hospital and released with a clean bill of health. The miracle of the heart’s ability to heal and its vigorous ability to withstand almost anything if given the proper time baffles the medical community over and over again.
posted by Ryan Rihani at 5:39 PM
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