Delicate Heart Surgery On Young Hokitika Woman

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28980, 22 August 1959, Page 7

Delicate Heart Surgery On Young Hokitika Woman

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, August 21. In the first operation of its kind in New Zealand, veins carrying blood from the lungs of a young Hokitika woman to the wrong chamber of her heart have been successfully switched to the correct chamber by Green Lane Hospital surgeons. Miss Nyra Fleming, aged 24, had her heart stopped for 45 minutes while the heart lung machine took over her circulation. Only seven such operations have been described in medical literature. A hole in the wall between the two heart chambers was repaired at the same time, and Miss Fleming today is making what doctors described as an “uneventful recovery." Although the patient was' hampered to a small degree only by the congenital malformation of her heart, complications causing death could have been expected. Without an operation, most sufferers from this abnormality die young. Normally blood oxygenated in the lungs is carried by veins to the left atrium or receiving chamber of the heart From there it goes to the left ventricle, pumping chamber, which sends it through the aorta to all parts of the body. There it deposits its oxygen, absorbing the body’s waste product, carbon dioxide, at the same time. Laden with carbon dioxide the blood returns to the heart, this time to the right receiving chamber. This drives the blood into the right pumping chamber which forces the blood to the lungs through the pulmonary artery.

In the lungs, carbon dioxide is exchanged for oxygen and the blood again goes through the pulmonary veins to the left receiving chamber of the heart. In Miss Fleming's case, the pulmonary veins did not enter the left receiving chamber but the right one. Had her heart been completely normal this would have sent her blood straight back to the lungs, starving her body of oxygen.

Luckily for her the hole in the wall between the two receiving chambers allowed sufficient oxygenated blood to enter the left, correct receiving chamber to keep her body supplied with oxygen.

However, complications could be expected to set in within a few years with fatal results, and it was decided to operate. “We are all very happy, it was a big worry when Nyra was going to have the operation,” said her father, Mr R. Fleming, at Hokitika this morning. “Nyra had grea-t faith in the doctors and was not at all frightened about the operation. This, I think, has done a great deal towards her recovery. “Mrs Fleming is in Auckland and I expect them both home in about six weeks,” said her father.

Miss Fleming has been sick since childhood and has not been able to work.

Car Recovered.— A 1957 Morris 10 car, which was taken from Riccarton road about 1.40 p.m. on Thursday, was recovered by the police in Linwood early yesterday. It was not damaged.