CHENNAI: Doctors at MGM Healthcare Hospital performed a complex mitral valve replacement surgery on a 14-year-old girl with rare heart anatomical abnormality and metabolic disorder. The girl was diagnosed with severe mitral valve disease that caused blood to leak backwards into the left atrium instead of being pumped efficiently to the rest of the body, placing excessive strain on the heart and causing severe breathlessness. She also had narrowing of the heat's outflow tract, making it even harder for the heart to pump blood, according to the press release.
A few hospitals declined to perform the surgery because the patient had two rare conditions: mesocardia (a congenital condition in which the heart is positioned in the centre of the chest, with its apex pointing towards the midline rather than to the left), and morquio syndrome, a rare inherited metabolic disorder that causes the accumulation of certain complex sugars in the body leading to progressive skeletal abnormalities, including instability of the upper cervical spine.
During the surgery the doctors cut the upper heart chamber and its surrounding walls including superior vena cava area to reach the mitral valve. It was then replaced with a 25 mm mechanical valve. The left ventricle was resected before suturing all the incisions closed, the release added. The surgery was performed on June 12 and she was discharged on June 25.