14 DAY TRIAL // A report published in yesterday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine details the case of a man whose heart went on a joyride and ended up in the right side of his chest following a motorcycle accident.
Information shared with the public says that the accident occurred in Italy, and that the man was 48 years old at the time he was involved in it, Live Science informs.
The doctors who treated him say that that they only figured out that something was seriously off after the man was brought to the hospital and they tried to listen to his heart.
It was then that they discovered that the organ was not in the right place. As shown in a series of images below, the accident caused the 48-year-old's heart to perform a 90-degree rotation and move to the other side of his chest.
What's more, X-rays and CT scans of the man's chest showed that, when rotating, the heart took several great vessels with it, the specialists who treated this patient explain.
“A chest radiography and computed tomographic scan showed a 90-degree rightward rotation of the cardiac silhouette and great vessels,” the report in the New England Journal of Medicine reads.
“A total-body CT scan showed rightward rotation of the pulmonary artery and aorta, rotation of both atria and rotation of both ventricles,” the specialists further detail in their report.
Despite the fact that the motorcycle accident was the reason why the man's heart moved inside his chest, doctors explain that the rotation occurred not on the spot, but in the minutes following the crash.
Thus, it is said that, due to several other injuries such as broken ribs and pulmonary contusions that the man sustained, air leaked from inside his lungs and filled his chest. It was this built-up of air that acted on the heart and compelled it to move.
Despite the fact that his injuries were quite severe, the man was not only alive, but also awake and alert at the time he was brought to the hospital. After figuring out what the problem was, doctors drained the air inside his chest and, just 24 hours after the accident, the man's heart was back in its right place.
Besides, there was no evidence to indicate that the experience caused any long-term damage either to the heart or to its accompanying vessels.
As detailed in the report, “A total of 24 hours after pleural drainage, the patient's heart moved leftward, back into its original position, with complete anatomical and physiological recovery of the great vessels and other areas.”
