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美国女孩德扎娜•西蒙斯因患有罕见心脏疾病，不得不接受两次心脏移植手术。在两次手术之间，西蒙斯靠体外人工心脏成功存活118天。14岁的西蒙斯19日病愈出院，她的母亲瓦拉•安德森把这称为“最不可思议的医学奇迹”。西蒙斯目前恢复良好。但一般接受心脏移植手术的病人需要在12年至13年后更换新的心脏。西蒙斯接下来只需长期服用抗排异药物，来保证植入心脏正常工作。除此之外，她完全可以像同龄人一样参加各种活动。
An American teenager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept
alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to
have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.
The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept
alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was
the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long.
The patient, D'Zhana Simmons of South Carolina, said the experience of
living for so long with a machine pumping her blood was "scary".
"You never knew when it would malfunction," she said, her voice barely
above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson
Memorial Medical Center.
"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just
here," she said of living without a heart.
Simmons, 14, suffered fromdilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the
patient's heart becomes weakened and enlarged and does not pump blood
efficiently.
She had a heart transplant on July 2 at Miami's Holtz Children's Hospital
but the new heart failed to function properly and was quickly removed.
Two heart pumps made by Thoratec Corp of Pleasanton, California, were
implanted to keep her blood flowing while she fought a host of ailments and
recovered her strength. Doctors implanted another heart on Oct 29.
"She essentially lived for 118 days without a heart, with her circulation
supported only by the two blood pumps," said Dr Marco Ricci, the hospital's
director of pediatric cardiac surgery. During that time, Simmons was mobile but
remained hospitalized.
When an artificial heart is used to sustain a patient, the patient's own
heart is usually left in the body, doctors said.
In some cases, adult patients have been kept alive that way for more than a
year, they said.
"This, we believe, is the first pediatric patient who has received such a
device in this configuration without the heart, and possibly one of the youngest
that has ... been bridged to transplantation without her native heart," Ricci
said.
Transplant pioneer dies
Dr Adrian Kantrowitz, a cardiac surgeon who performed the first human heart
transplant in the United States and who also developed lifesaving medical
implants, has died. He was 90.
Kantrowitz died last Friday in Ann Arbor of complications from heart
failure, said his wife, Jean Kantrowitz.
In 1967, Kantrowitz performed a human heart transplant three days after the
world's first was performed in South Africa.
But the transplant, on an infant who died several hours later, was only a
small part of his life's work to solve the problem of heart failure, his wife
said.
Adrian Kantrowitz invented and for decades continued to improve the left
ventricular assist device, or LVAD, which would later lend its name to his
Detroit-based research company, L-VAD Technology Inc.
The device is designed to be permanently implanted in patients with
otherwise-terminal heart failure, helping their hearts circulate blood and
allowing them to leave the hospital.
Kantrowitz also invented other lifesaving cardiac devices, including the
intra-aortic balloon pump.
He never retired, and "he never lost his mental alertness", said Jean
Kantrowitz. He was an avid pilot, motorcyclist and sailor. |
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发表于 2016-7-10 09:22:40