(Photo credit: Reuters)
November is a special month for D’Zhana Simmons. Every year, it marks her anniversary that she 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.
Simmons, then 14, was kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device. It is the first time a child has survived for so long in this manner.
D‘Zhana, a North Carolina native, 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 suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the patient’s heart becomes weakened and enlarged and does not pump blood efficiently.
(Photo credit: Reuters)
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 THOR.O 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…
Page 1 of 2
(Photo credit: Reuters)
November is a special month for D’Zhana Simmons. Every year, it marks her anniversary that she 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.
Simmons, then 14, was kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device. It is the first time a child has survived for so long in this manner.
D‘Zhana, a North Carolina native, 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 suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the patient’s heart becomes weakened and enlarged and does not pump blood efficiently.
(Photo credit: Reuters)
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 THOR.O 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…
Page 1 of 2
Read more https://blackdoctor.org/516937/medical-miracle-teen-survives-four-months-with-no-heart/