Your heart

Medical Journal Lancet in one of its recent edition carried an encouraging scientific report which stated that human heart has major regenerative powers, how it works need further research. The fact came to limelight when Sir Magdi Yacoub of Imperial College London, one of the world's top heart surgeons and his team successfully implanted a donor's heart directly onto a young patient's failing heart in 1995. Hannah Clark, the patient from Cardiff, UK had developed severe heart failure together with lung problems. She was then only 8 months old and the surgeons instead of performing transplanting of both her heart and lung implanted a donor heart from a 5-month old directly onto Clark's own heart. As the implanted heart and her own heart were working well after nearly 5 years, the doctors decided not to take out Clark's extra heart. But the drug Clark had to take to prevent her body from rejecting the donated heart led to cancer that required Chemotherapy. But this didn't stop spreading cancer and her body eventually rejected the implanted heart. But miraculously by then Clark's heart had fully recovered and the doctors successfully removed her donor heart in 2006. Now Clark is 16 years old and started living a normal life including playing games, doing a part time job.
The above mentioned miracle has brought a new hope for the heart patients. Once the mechanism of the heart's ability to regenerate and healing damaged tissues is found, treatment of heart failures will enter a new era.