Girl with two hearts

Amazing. [Link]

A British girl has recovered fully after spending 10 years with an extra heart transplanted alongside her own.

Surgeons this week described in detail how they saved her life twice, first by transplanting the heart, and then by taking it out again 10 years later.

Now 16 years old, Hannah Clark received a second heart in 1995 at the age of two to do the work of her own heart – the muscles of which were rapidly failing through cardiomyopathic disease.

Ten years after the operation, her own heart appeared to have fully recovered, but the donor heart – originally taken from a 5-month-old baby girl – was flagging.

Moreover, Hannah's life was again threatened, this time by a type of lymph cancer caused by an otherwise dormant virus, called the Epstein-Barr virus. The cancer struck four times altogether, mainly because immunosuppressive drugs to stop the donated heart being rejected prevented Hannah's immune system from keeping the virus in check.

So in February 2006, the second heart was removed, Hannah's immunosuppressive drugs halted, and within days her cancer disappeared, apparently for good.

She was almost a time lord, with two hearts. All she needs is a Tardis.