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A
miraculous thing happened the day Michael Crowe was set to receive a
potentially life-saving heart transplant. Doctors had determined the surgery
would be ineffective — but his heart suddenly started beating again.
Crowe, a
23-year-old pharmacy student from Omaha, had been diagnosed with acute
myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle, likely caused by a viral
infection. When his mother brought him to the emergency room at his local
hospital on Aug. 14, doctors found his heart was only functioning at about 25
percent efficiency. The hospital referred him to the Nebraska Medical Center,
and by the time he was admitted to the intensive care unit there, his heart’s
efficiency had dropped below 10 percent.
“If he had
come to us any later, his heart would have just stopped,” Dr. John Um, Surgical
Director of Heart Transplantation at Nebraska Medical Center told ABC News.
Doctors
hooked Crowe up to a heart-lung machine that would essentially act as his heart
for him, pumping blood throughout his body.
“When the
heart stops, that’s defined as clinical death,” Dr. Um said. “In this case, his
body only stayed alive because the machine was pumping his blood for him.”
Crowe was
immediately placed on a list for an emergency heart transplant, and remained on
the heart-lung machine in a medically induced coma until an appropriate donor
heart became available.
After
nearly three weeks, a heart was found.
The good news was followed by bad, though: tests revealed he had
contracted a blood infection. Doctors said he probably would not survive the
transplant surgery.
About an
hour later, one of his doctors noticed something strange — his blood pressure
was going up, something that would be impossible if his body was only receiving
blood through the machine.
“His heart
started working again on its own,” Dr. Um told ABC. “The left side of his heart
was pumping blood again. The right side was still weak, so we slowly eased him
off the machine. At this point, he was in pretty good shape.”
Dr. Um said
this was the first time one of his patients has been on an external heart-lung
machine for this long before his heart started beating again.
“He’s home
now, doing great,” Dr. Um said. “He’s really, really lucky.”
Um said
doctors seem to be seeing more cases similar to this, in which a failing heart
heals itself.
“The
interesting thing is that if he had gotten a transplant right away, we would
have never known if he could have recovered on his own,” Um said. “Now that we
have technology that allows people to remain on external heart machines longer,
we could see this more.”
In the
simplest terms, Dr. Um explained, the heart got sick, triggering an immune
response that shut the heart down to fight the infection, and eventually healed
itself. Technology kept Crowe’s body
alive while his heart healed.
Although
there could be effects on his heart in the future, Dr. Um said young people who
suffer from acute heart problems like Crowe’s tend to make a full recovery,
healing fully.
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