Doctors perform historic heart op in Cape
2013-01-09 18:54
Johannesburg - Doctors have performed a history-making
heart operation on a 59-year-old woman in Cape Town, Medi-Clinic SA said on
Wednesday.
They performed the world's first non-surgical closure of
a leaking heart valve on Marianna Cronje on Saturday.
She was born with her heart on the right side of her
chest.
"This procedure is technically extremely difficult
in a patient with normal anatomy, and has never been done before on someone
with [their heart on the right side of their chest]," said cardiologist
Hellmuth Weich.
Weich and his team were assisted in performing the
procedure by two world experts from Lausanne, in Switzerland.
"The entire procedure was performed through a needle
puncture in the patient’s groin," said Weich.
Cronje, from Stellenbosch, had rheumatic fever when she
was young, and had undergone four open-heart operations in the past 40 years -
the last one in 2000, he said.
When her heart valve started leaking, doctors could not
operate on her again and her condition deteriorated to the point where she
could do nothing for herself.
He said two devices used to close birth defects in
children's hearts were used to repair the leak.
Weich said the procedure, which took six hours, went
well, and that Cronje was making "a slow recovery".
- SAPA
