Selwa Hussain, the woman who lives thanks to an artificial heart that she carries in a backpack

Incredibly, and thanks to science, Selwa Hussein (44) can say that he does not need his heart to live. Yes, even if she seems crazy and unreal, the woman can continue to breathe thanks to an artificial device.

Selwa Hussain carries a 6-kilogram backpack that contains her artificial heart. It has batteries, an electric motor and a pump that pushes the air through the tubes to feed the plastic chambers in his chest which push blood throughout his body.

Selwa is the first woman in the UK to be discharged with a total artificial heart.

The strange case of Selwa Hussain started in June 2017, when unexpectedly he felt out of breathher family doctor sent her to the local hospital and she was told she was suffering from severe heart failure.

Selwa is a mother of two young children and was only 39 when her heart was removed from her body and replaced by a machine.

The woman suffered from familial dilated cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart disease, but had no symptoms until 2017. Her condition worsened rapidly and in June of that year she was rushed to Harefield Hospital with end-stage heart failure. .

An unusual solution

Diana García Sáez, a cardiothoracic transplant specialist at Harefield Hospital, told a British media: “Although we increased her medications, Selwa’s condition was worsening very rapidly.”

He added: “A left ventricular assist device can often be used to maintain circulation in patients with heart problems, but this was not an option because it would not support the right side of the failing heart. life was to implant a total artificial heart.

Surgeons saw the only viable option for giving Selwa a chance at life. take his heart out and replace it in an unconventional way. The operation lasted six hours.

The artificial heart was implanted in Selwa on 27 June 2017. Harefield Hospital is the only center in the UK to use this device as a treatment for heart failure patients.

“All I remember before the operation was crying to my sisters and expressing my last wishes to my family. I remember when I woke up, they told me they had ripped my heart out,” Selwa said in an interview for English television.

“I can’t thank the Harefield staff enough, they are all so positive with you, even when life seemed so dark. It’s a great place.”

The second case of a woman who underwent an artificial heart transplant, just like Selwa’s, did not have the expected ending.

In 2018, 24-year-old Rebeca Henderson lived for a year with the backpack that carried her artificial heart due to cancer that caused her most important organ to deteriorate completely. Even in the UK, she was unable to survive an operation to receive a donor organ and died of complications from the transplant.

a second chance

After the operation, Selwa Hussain had to stay in the hospital. The woman again learned to walk, talk, eat and drink; as well as strengthening her muscles: she had to adjust to her new life of hers.

“I was so sick before and after the surgery that it took me so long to get fit enough to get home,” the woman told the BBC. The artificial heart works with a handheld controller that weighs six pounds and he should be taken with Selwa wherever he goes.

However, thanks to his personal commitment to recovery and the experience of the Harefield team, Selwa was discharged in time to spend Christmas with her husband and children.

Selwa told the BBC: “During Christmas I was able to shop, visit my family and cook for the first time in months. The device is an absolute blessing. Spending time with my family, getting some, even a little, of It’s wonderful ”“ Waking up at Christmas and seeing the children playing at the foot of my bed was a moment of tears, it makes you appreciate how precious life is ”.

Today the woman is still waiting for a “traditional” heart transplant, while enjoying her children and this second chance that life has given her.