Medi-Clinic: Heart op patient doing well
2013-01-11 22:03
Johannesburg - The 59-year-old woman who became the world's
first patient to undergo the non-surgical closure of a leaking heart valve was
doing well in hospital, Medi-Clinic SA said on Friday.
"[Marianna Cronj] was transferred from the critical
care unit to a general nursing unit this [Friday] morning," the hospital
said in a statement.
Doctors performed the operation on Saturday, through a
thin tube inserted into her groin.
She was born with her heart on the right side of her
chest.
Cronj, 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.
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.
Her cardiologist, Dr Hellmuth Weich, would present her
case to the World Paediatric and Adult Cardiology Congress in Cape Town in
February.
- SAPA
