In 1995 British doctors implanted a donor heart directly onto Hannah Clark's failing one, rather than risk a heart - lung transplant. Now, after 10 years with 2 hearts, and the donor heart removed, her original heart has healed.
Many experts have said in the past that the heart can't regenerate and totally heal. Despite that seeming impossibility, Hannah Clark's heart has done so.
It was, in fact, somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory. The anti-rejection drugs Hannah Clark took malignant cancer that required chemotherapy. The details of this remarkable recovery were published Tuesday in the journal Lancet.
Clark's heart began failing while she was only two. While waiting for a possible heart transplant, her lungs started to fail as well. Doctors wanted to avoid an even riskier heart - lung transplant, so they decided to allow her original heart to "rest" with the aid of a donor heart.
In 2006, because the immunosuppressive drugs were reduced to aid in the cancer treatment, the donor heart was rejected and was removed. Since then, her heart has recovered, and Hannah Clark is now a 16-year-old looking forward to life.
Sir Magdi Yacoub of Imperial College London said:
"Now we are a lot more confident (about this procedure). The heart muscle itself, which was not doing anything at all, has recovered."
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