Girl's Heart Regenerates With Artificial Assist

Socguy writes with news about a 15-year-old girl who has become the first Canadian to have an artificial heart removed after her own heart healed itself. "Doctors at the Stollery Children's hospital implanted the Berlin Heart, a portable mechanical device that keeps blood pumping in an ailing heart, so she could survive until a transplant became available. But over the next few months, Melissa's overall condition improved dramatically, and her heart muscle regained much of its strength. After 146 days on the Berlin Heart, Melissa underwent surgery to have the device removed."

Let forth...

[2.7182 (819680)]

the broken heart jokes (I couldnt tink of one)

Re:Let forth...

[siyavash (677724)]

No, the joke would be too cruel. For god sake, somebody think of the children! :p

Re:Let forth...Pffaaa!

[andy666 (666062)]

Like many slashdotters, I've had my heart broken over and over, and it keeps regenerating. Like that Jody Foster thing....I was convinced she was serious, but I just couldn't get past security.

Re:Let forth...Pffaaa!

[WwWonka (545303)]

Like many slashdotters, I've had my heart broken over and over

...realizing once again that the 22 year old beautiful blonde girl with huge boobs on MySpace that just sent you a friend request is really your fat unemployed neighbor Ned?

Re:Let forth...Pffaaa!

[somersault (912633)]

Meh - as long as he has decent boobs too then it's okay

Re:

[astrosmash (3561)]

Formerly known as the Hitler Heart.

Re:

[RuBLed (995686)]

He's going bald??

Re:

[grolschie (610666)]

Hammond? :-)

Melissa Dorothy

[by Anonymous Coward]

In other news, her old artificial heart is to be given to her closest friend [tinyurl.com].

Sometimes...

[Corpuscavernosa (996139)]

... all that can be said is "that's really fucking cool." Seriously. Good for her. No immunosuppressants. Hopefully a full recovery.

Re:Sometimes...

[stox (131684)]

I'll second that. In addition, without a transplant, she stands a decent chance of living a long full life. Transplant patients don't last that long, on average.

Re:Sometimes...

[mgv (198488)]

I'll second that. In addition, without a transplant, she stands a decent chance of living a long full life. Transplant patients don't last that long, on average.

I think that you are being a bit harsh there.

Survival figures vary - overall in the USA the five-year survival [americanheart.org] rate is 71.2 percent for males and 66.9 percent for females. Its better than that in some units. This person's survival after a transplant would be alot higher than this as young people do better on average than older recipiants.

Over 2/3 alive at 5 years, and actually pretty similar at 10 years - bearing in mind that most of bad outcomes are in the first year, and that this is all causes of death, including deaths that were unrelated to the transplant.

The main bad thing about heart transplants is not getting enough hearts.

Having said this, you will see a significant number of people who do not require transplantation due to spontaneous recovery of function.

They still require two major operations - the VAD insertion and the VAD removal - so its not exactly a walk in the park.

And the VAD's such as this can have quite significant complications. The are good but not necessarily the only solution.

Michael

Re:

[steelfood (895457)]

What about 50 years? 70? The girl's 15. I'd expect her life expectancy to be around 85 if she had no need of a transplant. If she makes it to the 10 year mark, she'll be 25, and likely at her prime. What's the mortality rate for 20 years? I don't imagine it to be very high, even for children.

Granted, given her situation, she might have been dead in a year without a transplant, and 10 or 15 years is better than one. But transplants shouldn't be the final answer. Transplants should be more like asprin: a stop

Re:

[sjames (1099)]

Furthermore, with a transplant, she would be required to take anti-rejection medication for life and would suffer many more illnesses as a result.

Compared to death or a short bedridden life, a transplant is a great option. However, where feasible, a temporary VAD and recovery of the original heart is much better.

There is a form of heart transplant where the new heart is connected in parallel with the original. The procedure is more complex but offers better survival should rejection occur. I'm not sure

I want to know why she healed - what caused it

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

Did the invasive surgery trigger a healing response, or did she just need a boost until natural processes finished the job?

Re:I want to know why she healed - what caused it

[arivanov (12034)]

Her heart just needed a rest until it heals. There were a few cases here in the UK as well and implanting a parallel pump to assist is now considered a standard procedure in many cases where the transplant was the only option. Especially in kids and especially in cases where the heart has been damaged by inflammation. It is a safe bet really - if it heals good, if it does not the patient has a much better chance to survive until a suitable transplant is found. It is a pity that most pumps can take load only off some portions of the heart and not all of it (too much blood in the coffee subsystem to remember which).

Re:

[Spokehedz (599285)]

There was a study where they replaced someone's heart with a pump--not one that simulated a heartbeat, but just a constant flow. And the paitent lived for years afterwards... with no pulse.

However, the mental issues with 'not having a pulse' were almost insurmountable. You are alive, yet you have no pulse. Also, you are used to a constant movement inside your chest--that was also hard to get adjusted too, if they did at all.

However, just as in this story the patient's heart just re-started itself. Happy end

OK, I doubt it

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

Heart cells are a specialized form of muscle cell, not smooth muscle cells. According to your article they think they are seeing stem cells reproducing, not cardiac muscle cells.

The next challenge, according to Anversa, is to find the source of the dividing myoctyes. "Are these cells a sub-population of known cells that retain the capacity to divide, or are they multiplying cells that originate from stem cells present in the heart?" he asks.

"There are preliminary indications that primitive cells like stem cells exist in the human heart. Stem cells may have the ability to develop into the various cardiac cell types and form new healthy functioning myocardium. If we can prove the existence of cardiac stem cells and make these cells migrate to the region of tissue damage, we could conceivably improve the repair of damaged heart muscle and reduce heart failure," says Anversa.

Cardiac muscle cells, however, do not reproduce after a certain point: [hhmi.org]

Not all cells from multicellular organisms are still able to divide, though. Once the heart is full sized, the heart cells in a human body do not divide anymore. They no longer have that ability. When a person has a heart attack and some heart cells die, the heart is permanently damaged the heart can't just replace those dead cells.

According to Doris Taylor (Departments of Medicine and Surgery at Duke University Medical Center. She did post-doctoral work in cardiac (heart) molecular biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.)

The heart cannot repair the damaged muscle because its muscle cells cannot reproduce, Doris explains. You are born with all the heart cells you will ever have. Your heart grows because the cells become larger, not because they multiply. However, other muscles do have the ability to repair themselves because they contain cells called myoblasts, which can reproduce.

Re:

[Hoi Polloi (522990)]

They've only seen reproduction in neural stem cells and glial cells. Neurons lack centrioles [cancer.gov] so they cannot reproduce. There is evidence of neural stem cells reproducing in the hippocampus and olfactory areas. [jneurosci.org]

Re:I want to know why she healed - what caused it

[mwvdlee (775178)]

All I wonder is; now that her own heart is doing all the work again, will it be able to cope or is it going to relapse and start failing again in time?

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

well.. consider that your heart has to keep beating your whole life. Hers has had a nice little holiday, hopefully her heart will be able to cope after that. No, IANADoctor

Re:

[mwvdlee (775178)]

What I basically meant is; her heart got to a state where it needed to be replaced over roughly the first 14 years of her life (do we include life inside the mother's womb?). Why wouldn't it deteriorate to that state again after another 14 years?

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

Maybe she had a defect from birth that wasn't able to be repaired because the heart was in use, and now that it's had a chance to repair itself, she will be okay

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[CastrTroy (595695)]

From what I can Google, the heart starts beating about 3-4 weeks after conception. So we should count most of the pregnancy as time that her heart was beating.

Re:Acute illness

[eam (192101)]

Congratulations. You managed to guess the truth. It might have been easier to just read the article, but you managed to figure out what was going on anyway.

The second sentence in the article:

"Melissa Mills arrived at Edmonton's Stollery Children's Hospital last year after a sudden illness made her critically ill and a candidate for a heart transplant."

It wouldn't be slashdot if people didn't ask questions that were answered by the article ;-)

Re:

[MMC Monster (602931)]

It's not that the heart "healed". What happens after a serious injury to the heart (whether a heart attack, viral infection, or anything else), is that the heart becomes weaker and tries to adapt. Things that physicians do to help the heart adapt in the right way (as opposed to the wrong way) include assist devices that will pump the blood forward. These include artificial hearts, left ventricular and biventricular assist devices, and intra-aortic balloon pumps. Other things that help people along are m

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Don't be ridiculous. Why would Nazis want to replace the innocent heart of a young girl with a cold, steel mach.. OH MY GOD!!! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!!!!

She isn't the only one...

[MacDork (560499)]

A 13 year old boy recovered [timesonline.co.uk] without a transplant with the help of one of these things as well.

Common occurence : apparentely 1 in 3 child recove

[aepervius (535155)]

Quote from the article you cited :

As one in three children recover from myocarditis on their own, the medics decided to wait and see if Jack's own heart could grow strong enough to work on its own without the need for a transplant.

Maybe

[User 956 (568564)]

Maybe her heart didn't regenerate. Maybe she just has two, because she's a klingon.

Re:Maybe

[by Anonymous Coward]

...or a timelord?

Re:

[king-manic (409855)]

Maybe her heart didn't regenerate. Maybe she just has two, because she's a klingon.

I didn't notice forehead ridges. Must be a Timelord then.

Re:

[bytesex (112972)]

Or Mathew Starr.

Praise Jesus!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Our God is indeed a God of Mircales and Wonders. The hand of the great Healer is clearly at work for this sweet girl.

Thank you, Jesus! Praise be to your precious name.

Praise be to science!

[typidemon (729497)]

Without whom this little girl would have died. Oh, congratulations to Jesus for getting around to saving the little girl's life.

I'd imagine that if more people had donated money to the church, Jesus would have been able to get to her sooner rather than later. Jesus loves us, but he needs money. So get off of your chair and donate some money now, so her little friend might be saved.

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[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

You can love only one master: God or Money. You will love one and hate the other.

I wonder if this girl is related to the Cheerleader off Heroes?

Re:

[BrainInAJar (584756)]

Left to the devices of God this girl would have died.

This was man's work, not God's.

Re:Praise Jesus!

[MMC Monster (602931)]

Let us give thanks to his noodly appendage.

is this that special?

[Racemaniac (1099281)]

don't remember where, but i recently read that it's well known that the human heart is capable of some serious self healing, so i'm not that surprised by this.
did it heal beyond what they thought was possible/normal? or is it only under certain conditions that weren't met this time?

Re:is this that special?

[compro01 (777531)]

or is it only under certain conditions that weren't met this time?

presumablely her heart just needed a reduction in workload to allow it to heal, so they used this neat gadget to temporarily assist it until it was fully functional again.

Re:is this that special?

[myc (105406)]

actually, the human heart has very poor healing capacity. This is why ischemic heart disease eventually kills you; your damaged heart heals by scarring, which leads to decreased cardiac output and eventually apoptotic or necrotic cell death of cardiomyocytes.

IANAHRBMWI (I am not a heart researcher but my wife is)

House M.D.

[Antarius (542615)]

Gregory House, eat your heart out! Er, wait...

I wish they had given my Rachel one...

[RoboJ1M (992925)]

20th December 2006 and I'm watching my girlfriend Rachel die from sudden congestive heart failure.

I remember thinking, "Why isn't there a machine to pump the blood so her heart can rest?"

I hope this thing gets everywhere to save other people and their partners.

J1M.

Re:I wish they had given my Rachel one...

[TheThiefMaster (992038)]

My god some of these anonymous guys are mean.

I hope all of you never have to watch someone you know die, I really do.

Re:I wish they had given my Rachel one...

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad

That being said, I hope they all get ass cancer, and that their families, not wanting to have to experience watching someone die, abandon them to die alone.

Re:I wish they had given my Rachel one...

[Lemming Mark (849014)]

It's awful that you had to go through that experience. I can't even imagine how you must have felt, but you have my deepest sympathies. Please take no notice of the anonymous replies to your comment - they're really not even worth reading. Some idiots actually think they're being clever by displaying their ignorance.

I'm no doctor, but I guess this technology would not be suitable for use in all cases, and that some patients still require more conventional treatment by other means - but hopefully that will keep advancing too. It's amazing to see progress like this being made in medicine and I too hope that it can help many more people.

I extend my sincere condolences for your loss and my best wishes for you.

Sincerely,
Mark Williamson

No Surprise.

[kahrytan (913147)]

  Don't you know, the heart has adult stems in it. Hell, most of the body has them. Body can regenerate itself. No surprise to me

Libertarian question

[CptPicard (680154)]

How the fuck can a 15-year old girl's wealth generation ability be enough for some fancy artificial heart?? Her parents better have paid for it, or otherwise it distorted the market and reduced my ability to make more profits.

There was an excellent Outer Limits episode (1x05) of exactly this kind of an event, but of course Socialist propaganda was injected into it to make the ending morally repugnant.

Re:

[Solra Bizna (716281)]

Call me when somebody survives being ripped to bloody shreds by red-hot shards of metal and we can start talking real-life Unreal Tournament. :P

-:sigma.SB

Sorry to piggyback your post

[by Anonymous Coward]

Better article [edmontonsun.com] with quotes and a picture of her and the Berlin Heart.