New Surgery For Rare Heart Cases

Using animal and human tissue, doctors in Baltimore have rebuilt a 46-year-old woman's ailing heart. Though rare, the procedure has been used before. But never before has so much of a human heart been removed and replaced. National Correspondent Thalia Assuras reports.

Somewhat weak and breathing with difficulty, 46-year-old Sandy Lanier nevertheless had the strength to dream of a new future.

"It's gonna make me better than ever, that's what it's going to make me," she says.

In fact, Lanier's heart had been remade, thanks to an extraordinary "first" in cardiac surgery. In a 12-hour operation, doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center lifted her heart from her chest, removed both upper chambers (the atria) and replaced them with sacks made of animal and human donor tissue.

Dr. James Gammie, a heart surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, explains: "After reconstructing both sort of halves of the heart, we brought the heart back up into the chest and sewed it back in and restored blood flow to it, and we said a short prayer and the heart started working."

Lanier's heart had been ravaged by non-cancerous but deadly tumors called myxomas and was diagnosed with a hereditary disorder called the "carney complex," characterized by recurring myxomas. It's a rare illness afflicting only about 400 people worldwide.

Lanier was caught in an endless cycle. New tumors kept appearing like clockwork. She was always tired and there was the constant threat of blood clots and other deadly complications.

She had three previous open-heart surgeries to remove the recurring tumors. But this time, surgeons decided against a fourth such operation and also rejected a heart transplant.

"We felt the transplant was by nature more risky in that she would have to take medication to prevent rejection," says Dr. Bartley Griffith, chief heart surgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center. "We felt that if she could get her own heart back, that she would not face the risk of rejection."

With her own newly reconstructed heart, doctors say Lanier is recovering well and can expect to leave the hospital soon.

"It was rough," she says, "but I made it through."

And other heart patients for whom a transplant was once the only recourse may now have another, perhaps better, option.

It makes me feel good 'cause…there's other people that have this…syndrome and stuff. And you know, if it helps them…thank God," Lanier concludes.