A man survived a motorcycle accident that caused his heart to rotate in his body and move to his chest's right side.
The emergency room doctors treated the 48-year-old unidentified man and found that his heart was placed in an unusual spot when they listened to the rhythms and sounds of his heart. The man's chest underwent a CT scan and X-ray, showing that his heart rotated 90 degrees towards the right.
Dr. Enrico Petranzan and Dr. Andrea Colli from Italy's University of Padua said the patient suffered from numerous other injuries. He broke his ribs, ruptured his spleen and punctured one of his lungs which caused the air to escape and congest a space in his chest. The pressure and buildup of air pushed the man's heart to turn in his chest. The doctors repaired the blood vessels, treated his ribs and removed his spleen.
The doctors drained the air in the man's chest cavity for 24 hours which moved his heart towards the left and back into its normal position. Within a day, great vessels and other body areas were in complete physiological and anatomical recovery.
The incident is uncommon but a heart could be found in people with birth defects. People who had their right lung removed for cancer treatment can also make way for a free space in the sac where the heart can move into.
The big arteries and structures at the back of his heart were fixed to the tissue and the spine but the heart seemed to float in the sac around it. One possibility is that the looseness or injury in the sac around his heart allowed the movable part of his heart to turn on the fixed areas and end up on the wrong side of his chest.
Surprised that the patient survived from the trauma, Dr. Gregory Fontana from New York City's Lenox Hill Hospital who was not part of the case said the incident was an interesting anatomical finding. "I had never seen anything like it," Fontana said. "What's unique about this case is the way the heart rotated so far in the other direction, and the patient was still awake and alert."
