Clark's historic 'two heart' recovery
Updated on 14 July 2009
Hannah Clark had a donor heart grafted onto her own after suffering heart failure as a baby. Thirteen years later she is now celebrating a second recovery after having the donor organ removed. Sally Gould reports.
Hannah Clark, now 16-years-old, had a donor heart grafted onto her own after suffering heart failure as a baby.
A decade later surgeons removed the transplanted organ as her own heart had recovered sufficiently to operate on its own.
Writing in an early online edition of The Lancet medical journal today, the medical team at Harefield Hospital in London said the procedure had been a complete success.
Hannah, from Mountain Ash, near Cardiff in Wales, said: "Thanks to this operation, I've now got a normal life just like all of my friends.
"I've just done my GCSEs, and I've now got a Saturday job looking after animals, which I couldn't have done before. I'm really glad that I don't have to rely on life-saving drugs anymore."
Hannah was brought to the hospital at the age of eight months in 1994 suffering from severe heart failure.
In July 1995 she underwent the transplant in which a donor heart was grafted onto her own heart, taking over much of its workload.
Freed from the stress of pumping blood around her body, Hannah's heart was allowed to rebuild itself and recover.
Meanwhile, she had to take powerful drugs to stop her immune system rejecting the graft. The drugs caused her to develop a virus-associated cancer which in 2005 led doctors to take the decision to remove the donor heart. This had never been done before.
The operation took place in February 2006 at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
Doctors stopped giving Hannah immunosuppressive drugs, and she made a complete recovery from the cancer.
In 2006 Victoria Macdonald reported on Hannah's second operation for Channel 4 News. You can watch her report here.
Three years and six months later she remained well and her own heart was functioning normally, said the surgeons.
Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, who led the team, said: "Hannah's case highlights that, in cases of infant cardiomyopathy such as hers, it is possible for the patient's own heart to make a full recovery if it is given adequate support to do so.
"This is an important piece of knowledge as we are now gaining more experience with mechanical support for the failing heart in children."
Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation (BHF), said: "This is a great example of how a pioneering and novel approach to a medical problem can lead to surprising results that tell us a lot about how some heart diseases progress.
"It also opens the way for new research on just how damaged hearts manage to recover, which in turn may lead to new treatments for heart failure."
