She's only fifteen years old, but D'zhana Simmons feels lucky to be alive.
"Basically, I was a miracle child."
"Don't nobody on the face of this earth have a reason to worry that there's not a God up above that takes care of you."
Last summer, D'zhana was diagnosed with cardio-myopathy -- a dangerously enlarged heart. "Her heart failure was so severe that she had no other choice but a heart transplant."
She got that transplant after only a week on the waiting list, but the heart failed. "Scary." While she waited for a second heart, Doctor Marco Ricci and his team at Holtz Children's Hospital kept her alive with this heart assist machine.
"Normally, the machine is connected to the heart. In her case, the heart was removed so the machine had to be connected to the blood vessels."
D'zhana walked the halls of the hospital with no heart as the machine pumped life through her body.
"It had never been done in a pediatric patient."
D'zhana lived without a heart for 118 days until a second one became available.
"Very thankful."
The second transplant was a success, and D'zhana's family can finally look toward the future without fear.
"I think she'll be able to accomplish anything she set her mind to."
A teen taking on a new phase of her life with a new, improved heart.
D'zhana's transplanted heart is working fine. Doctor Ricci does not believe she'd be alive if they had not tried this new approach. Doctor Ricci knows of only two adults this has ever been tried on, but neither lived as long on the machine with no heart as D'zhana.
CARDIOMYOPATHY: A heart muscle disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and does not work like it should due to the deterioration of the myocardium (the actual heart muscle). There are three types of cardiomyopathy: dilated, hypertrophic and restrictive. Dilated (congestive) cardiomyopathy is the most common form. In this type, the heart cavity is enlarged and stretched. The heart gradually becomes weaker and does not pump normally, causing most patients to develop heart failure. Arrhythmias, abnormal heart rhythms and disturbances in the heart's electrical conduction may also occur. As blood flows more slowly though the now enlarged heart, blood clots may also form. All of this sometimes results in a heart transplant being the only means of survival.
According to the Miller School of Medicine, 3 million people in the United States are living with cardiomyopathy, and 400,000 people are diagnosed each year. Every year, cardiomyopathy contributes to about a quarter of a million deaths.
HEART ASSIST MACHINES: Heart assist machines help a patient survive until a heart transplant can be performed. An implantable ventricular assist device is a mechanical pump that helps a person's heart that is too weak to pump blood through the body. Each pump is connected to a ventricle, the right and the left, to assist the ventricles in pumping blood normally. But in D'Zhana's case, there were no heart or ventricles to connect to the pumps. To remedy the problem, artificial conduits were made to connect blood vessels to the machine, allowing blood to pump though the body.
PROGNOSIS: Once a patient receives a new heart, the heart is seen by the body as a foreign organ, and the patient's immune system may attack the new organ and reject it. Immunosuppressant drugs are often administered to help prevent this from happening. The life expectancy of a transplanted heart is not forever. On average, the life expectancy is about 15 years, which means a patient that has received a heart transplant will potentially face the need for a second transplant after 15 years. This process, called chronic rejection, happens even though a patient is taking immune suppressive medications. The chronic small process of rejection occurs over many years, and at some point becomes so advanced the transplanted heart starts to lose its function and a new heart must replace it.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Omar Montejo
University of Miami Office of Communication
(305) 243-5654
omontejo@miami.edu
