Girl’s Heart Heals Itself
July 14, 2009 by Cherie Burbach
Filed under Women's Health
When we think of heart failure, we think of needing a new heart because the original heart does not work properly. But a new and very exciting real life case study has proven that perhaps that thinking is wrong. In some patients, a heart may actually be able to repair itself and become healthy again.
British doctors did something off the charts when they gave young Hannah Clark (who was just eight months old at the time) a donor heart. However, they didn’t just transplant the new heart and remove her own damaged heart. Instead, they “implanted a donor heart directly onto her own failing heart.”
After ten years, the girl’s own heart had healed to the point where doctors could actually remove the donated heart. This study showed that the heart can regenerate under certain circumstances. New research will be required to determine exactly how and when this can happen, but to know it’s possible greatly changes what the medical world knows about the heart.
Image: sxc.hu.
