Girl lives 118 days without heart, goes home healthy

Girl lives 118 days without heart, goes home healthy

Doc: First For A Child To Survive On Pumps. GRATEFUL: D’Zhana Simmons sheds tears of joy.

Miami: 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 on 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.

Marco Ricci, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at St Holtz

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, South Carolina, 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. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh who works with the kind of pumps used in this case, said what the Miami medical team managed to do “is a big deal”. “For (more than) 100 days, there was no heart in this girl’s body? That is pretty amazing,” Wearden said.

The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood. With D’Zhana’s heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children’s Hospital crafted substitute heart chambers using a fabric and connected these to the two pumps. Although artificial hearts have been approved for adults, none has been approved for kids’ use.
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. Taking a short stroll — when she felt up for it — required the help of four people, at least one of whom would steer the photocopier-sized machine that was the external part of the pumping devices.
When D’Zhana was stable enough for another operation, doctors did the second transplant on October 29. She’ll be able to do most things that teens do, like attending school and going out with friends. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there’s a 50-50 chance she’ll need another transplant before she turns 30.
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. AP

MEDICAL MIRACLE
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Doctors replace 14-year-old D’Zhana Simons’s heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that keep blood flowing through her body until she’s ready for a second transplant

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The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood

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With her heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children’s Hospital craft substitute heart chambers using a fabric, and connect these to the two pumps

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D’Zhana isn’t able to breathe on her own half the time. She also has kidney and liver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding

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Taking a short stroll — when she feels up for it — requires the help of four people. At least one of them has to steer the photocopier-sized machine that forms the external part of the pumping devices

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Doctors say she’ll now be able to do most things that teens do, like going to school. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there’s a 50-50 chance she’ll need another transplant