City heart procedure makes world history

HISTORY was made when a Stellenbosch woman became the world’s first patient with their heart on the right side of their chest, to have a leaking valve closed in a non-surgical procedure performed through a needle puncture.

Yesterday the patient, 59year-old Marianna Cronjé, was said to be doing well at Mediclinic Panorama.

“She looks very good today and the doctor’s happy with her,” Melinda Pelser, Mediclinic’s regional marketing manager, said.

Cronjé may be able to speak to the media today.

In a statement, Mediclinic Panorama said history was made on Saturday when a team of doctors there had performed the operation.

It said Cronjé had a physical anomaly – dextrocardia with situs inversus – which meant her heart was on the right side of her chest instead of the left.

“This procedure is technically extremely difficult in a patient with normal anatomy, and has never been done before on someone with dextrocardia,” said Hellmuth Weich, the cardiologist who performed the procedure on Cronjé.

He had arranged for two leaders in the field, Eric Eeckhout and Alain Delabays, to be flown from Lausanne, Switzerland, to Cape Town.

The six-hour procedure took place in the hospital’s catheterisation laboratory and was performed through a needle puncture in Cronjé’s groin.

A tube had been fed through a vein up into the right side of her heart and a hole was then made in the heart’s wall so the left side of the heart could be reached, according to the statement.

“From here the leak in the mitral valve had to be crossed and was then closed with two

disc-like devices, which are actually intended for closing birth defects in children’s hearts,” it said.

Weich, who practices at Mediclinic Panorama and is attached to Stellenbosch University and Tygerberg Hospital, said Cronjé was making a slow recovery in hospital. He added that while the procedure had been successful, her condition prior to the procedure had been poor and it could take another month or more for her to recover.

The statement said Cronjé had suffered rheumatic fever when she was young and as a result had undergone four open-heart operations over four decades.

Her last valve replacement had been 12 years ago. However, due to scar tissue and other problems, it had been considered her last operation.

The statement said when the final valve developed a leak, she had no surgical options and her condition had slowly deteriorated until she could not do anything for herself. Cronjé had then been referred to Weich as a candidate for the non-surgical procedure.