British girl had donor organ implanted onto her own to give hers time to recover
By Maria Cheng
Photo by Barry Batchelor, Associated Press
Associated Press
Published: Monday, July 13, 2009 9:54 p.m. MDT
LONDON — British doctors designed a radical solution to save a girl with major heart problems in 1995: they implanted a donor heart directly onto her own failing heart.After 10 years with two blood-pumping organs, Hannah Clark's faulty one did what many experts had thought impossible: it healed itself enough so that doctors could remove the donated heart.
But she also had a price to pay: the drugs Clark took to prevent her body from rejecting the donated heart led to malignant cancer that required chemotherapy.
Details of Clark's revolutionary transplant and follow-up care were published online today in the medical journal Lancet.
"This shows that the heart can indeed repair itself if given the opportunity," said Dr. Douglas Zipes, a past president of the American College of Cardiology. Zipes was not linked to Clark's treatment or to the Lancet paper. "The heart apparently has major regenerative powers, and it is now key to find out how they work."
In 1994, when Clark was eight months old, she developed severe heart failure and doctors put her on a waiting list to get a new heart. But Clark's heart difficulties caused problems with her lungs, meaning she also needed a lung transplant.
To avoid doing a risky heart and lung transplant, doctors decided to try something completely different.
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