14/7/2009

World first shows heart can recover

Hannah Clark, who had a donor heart grafted onto her own after suffering heart failure as a baby, has made a full recovery.

After a decade, the donor heart was removed because her own heart had recovered sufficiently to operate on its own.

Now, more than three years on from this second operation, Hannah’s remarkable story - from baby to present day, she's now aged 16 - has been reported in an article published online in an edition of The Lancet.

Famous heart surgeon and former British Heart Foundation Chair, Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub - who undertook Hannah's operation - has developed this area of research by using mechanical devices, instead of real donor organs, that take over the work of failing hearts.

Sir Magdi and Dr Emma Birks, with support from BHF and others, have shown that some patients with severe heart failure caused by cardiomyopathy can also recover well after a period with the device and a special combination of medicines.

In response to the story of Hannah Clark, Professor Peter Weissberg, BHF Medical Director, described the operation as "an exciting and important event".

He said: "Cardiologists have long wondered whether a heart which is failing because of cardiomyopathy might be able to recover if rested.

"This seems to be exactly what has happened in Hannah's case in which the donor heart allowed her own heart to take a rest and recover.

"This is an exciting discovery since it proves that, in some instances, a weakened heart has the capacity to recover if it can be helped"

"This breakthrough provides a great boost to ongoing efforts to perfect a mechanical heart, called a ventricular assist device, that can be used temporarily to take over the work of a weak heart while it recovers. 

"This is a great example of how a pioneering and novel approach to a medical problem can lead to surprising results that tell us a lot about how some heart diseases progress.

"It also opens the way for new research on just how damaged hearts manage to recover, which in turn may lead to new treatments for heart failure."