PLUCKY MUM WHO CARRIES HER HEART IN A RUCKSACK
Amazing £86,000 portable device keeps her alive as she builds up strength for transplant operation
THANKS to her amazing rucksack Selwa Hussain is celebrating the New Year her family feared she would never see. The 39-year-old is the only person in Britain to have a portable artificial heart which she carries on her back. Without the device the mother of two could only survive for a matter of seconds.
The pack contains a batterypowered electric motor, sensor box and pump. They are attached to an implant in Selwa’s chest and constantly push blood around her body.
Her artificial heart, fitted at Harefield hospital in Middlesex, is just the latest advance in this type of surgery. Treatments have certainly come a long way since Christiaan Barnard carried out the first heart transplant operation relying on a human donor 50 years ago.
Selwa, from Clayhall, Essex, was diagnosed with severe heart failure seven months ago when she was so badly out of breath that she could barely walk. By the time she actually reached Harefield her life was ebbing away.
Doctors decided that Selwa was too ill to go on the transplant list or even have a support pump fitted to keep her alive in hospital until a donor was found. An artificial heart was the only option so the failing organ was removed.
The pump in the portable device is linked to two plastic tubes which enter Selwa’s body under her ribcage. They travel up to her chest and fill two balloons with air, enabling them to work like the chambers of a real heart and push blood round her body. The mechanical version works in the same way as a human heart transplant, replacing both failing ventricles and the valves they hold.
Unlike previous artificial hearts, which have been around since the 1970s, the latest versions allow patients to leave hospital and they function indefinitely.
When Selwa is not on the move the device, which weighs 15lb mainly because of its heavy batteries, can be placed on the floor or at her bedside. There is a constant whirring noise from the backpack as the “heart in a bag” helps the blood circulate at 138 beats a minute.
However it can never be detached and just in case of malfunction there is always a back-up nearby. She can’t be alone for long as there is just a 90-second window to get it working again and the plan is for Selwa to build up her strength and eventually have a transplanted human heart.
She is following in the footsteps of Michael Green, who became the first Briton to be given a fully portable artificial heart in 2011 at Papworth hospital in Cambridge. It kept the 40-year-old alive for two years until a human donor was found and he is still doing well.
In the meantime Selwa can get on with many aspects of everyday life but she admits that lugging the life-saving backpack everywhere is a strange sensation.
“It has taken me a while to get used to,” says Selwa, who is married to Al. The couple have a boy, aged five, and an 18-month-old daughter. “I was so ill and I’m just so grateful that the doctors at Harefield came up with this solution that allowed me to stay alive and enjoy New Year with my family. I am eternally grateful.”
Selwa is thought to suffer from the rare condition cardiomyopathy which was triggered by pregnancy. At the start of 2016 she complained of chest pains, now thought to be the first warning signs, but the symptoms were initially blamed on a digestive illness.
BY THE time the true cause emerged her heart was functioning at only 10 per cent of the healthy rate. She adds: “All I remember from before the operation was crying to my sisters and giving my final wishes to my family. I was unconscious for more than a week and when I came round I really didn’t know where I was.
“I remember when I woke up being told my heart had been taken out. I was so disorientated I thought, ‘What does this mean, have I died?’ I had been so ill before the operation that I convinced myself I’d gone to heaven.”
Her £86,000 artificial heart was fitted in June during a six-hour operation by surgeon Diana Garcia Saez, assisted by Harefield’s head of transplantation surgery Andre Simon.
Law graduate Selwa says: FIRST: Heart patient Michael Green “Waking up and seeing the kids playing at the bottom of my bed was a tearful moment. My little one was only a year old when I had the surgery. Now she’s walking and running around. When I started to get breathless before the surgery it was a struggle handling the kids. It makes you appreciate how precious life is.”
Several months of recovery and physiotherapy followed before Selwa was able to go home for Christmas and New Year. However, as the artificial heart is doing a much better job than her own she has gradually regained her health.
“I can now walk as far as I want,” she adds. “I’ve been to the park with the children, gone shopping and cooked for my family for the first time in months. It’s so wonderful to have normality back.”
A few puzzled stares from strangers who notice the tubes running ACTIVE: Courageous Selwa Hussain is able to carry on with everyday life from the backpack and beneath her clothes is a small price to pay for this freedom.
“I get people coming up to me and asking questions,” says Selwa, who doesn’t yet know when she will receive a human heart. “They are all amazed when I tell them my heart is on my back in a bag.”
It was on December 3, 1967 that 53-year-old Larry Washkansky, who was dying of heart failure, received a replacement organ which was transplanted by Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa. Sadly the patient died 18 days later but the signs were promising. One of the hurdles was developing drugs that would stop the body rejecting the new heart while also allowing the rest of the body to stay healthy. The second recipient lived for almost two years. In 1968 there were 100 transplants including Frederick West, 45, the first person to have the treatment the UK, who lived for 46 days.
The longest-surviving patient was John McCafferty, from Newport Pagnell, Bucks, who was told he had five years to live when he underwent the surgery in 1982 at the age of 40. He survived for 33 years, allowing him to see his grandchildren grow up.
Heart transplants have now become commonplace, with only a shortage of donors preventing the treatment from being even more popular. In the world there are 5,000 a year and half the recipients now live for 10 years or more.
Former US vice president Dick Cheney is among those to have received a human heart. However as technology improves experts believe the future is artificial.
In years to come every hospital might just have mechanical hearts, sitting in a box, ready. in