Teen Lives 4 Months With No Heart, Leaves Hospital
Between transplants, teen survives 4 months with no heart as Miami doctors improvise.
D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart."
As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants.
Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant.
But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later.
And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant.
Read more at: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartHealth/w...
http://know4life.blogspot.com/
D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart."
As she was being released Wednesday from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants.
Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant.
But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later.
And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant.
Read more at: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartHealth/w...
http://know4life.blogspot.com/
...And it nearly was. During the almost four months between her two transplants, D'Zhana wasn't able to breathe on her own half the time. She also had kidney and liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding...
This is nothing short of a medical miracle, because this girl should have been dead with these additional problems besides having the heart problem. I have worked in cardiology for many years and have heard of the VADs (ventricular assist devices) which I was first introduced to when I worked at Newark Beth Israel Med. Ctr, but I can't say that I have heard of anything like this being done. Thank God for brillant doctors, because there are many quacks practicing---believe me when I say this.