Pioneering surgery on girl, 12, reverses heart transplant

"A 12-year-old girl given a heart transplant 10 years ago is believed to have become the first person in the UK to have the donor organ removed and her own heart reconnected."

"Hannah Clark was two when diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, which made her heart twice the size it should have been and placed it under such strain that it would probably have given out within a year. A team led by Sir Magdi Yacoub operated on Hannah when she was a baby and put a 'piggy-back' donor heart next to her own, which remained in place while the new organ took over the job of pumping most of her blood. All had seemed well until last November when a routine checkup revealed that Hannah had begun to reject the new heart.

Mr and Mrs Clark, of Mountain Ash in south Wales, asked surgeons at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London to remove the donor heart and reconnect the dormant one, but they said they were reluctant because it had never been done before. The parents approached Sir Magdi, world famous as the heart transplant pioneer, and the 70-year-old agreed to come out of retirement to advise the surgical team. The operation was performed on February 20, and proved a remarkable success.

'The doctors couldn't believe how everything had gone to plan but when Professor Yacoub came back on the scene I knew we had the best person,' Mrs Clark said. 'They were expecting it to take at least eight hours, but she was out within four hours. They also said she could be in intensive care for weeks, maybe months; they just didn't know, because it was the first time it had been done.'

'Hannah recovered so well she was able to come home within five days.'

The procedure means that the girl no longer has to take the strong anti-rejection drugs she had been on while she had the donor heart. She has also battled lymph cancer for the past few years, and is in remission after successful chemotherapy in January this year. A spokesman for the cardiac team at Great Street Ormond Hospital said: 'We are delighted that Hannah is doing so well. We believe that this combination of circumstances is the first for children or adults in the UK.'

Prof Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said that surgeons had suspected for some time that failing hearts might be able to recover if given respite by a 'piggy-back heart'. He said: 'Today the approach would be to implant a mechanical heart, called a ventricular assist device, to take over the work of the inflamed heart in the hope that the heart will recover, and the device can be taken out after a few months. Ten years ago such devices were not sufficiently reliable, which is why Hannah received a donor heart alongside her own'."

Source :
Article by Sam Jones
The Guardian