A GIRL WITH 2 HEARTS

The BBC  write: "A 16-year-old girl from Wales who made history when she had a donor heart grafted onto her own as a baby has made a full recovery.

Doctors say Hannah Clark's own heart is now in perfect working order three-and-a-half years after her "piggy-back" donor heart was removed.

Sir Magdi Yacoub, who performed Hannah's original transplant when she was two, said he was "delighted".

The Lancet medical journal tells her story.

The original operation in 1995 saved Hannah's life because she had cardiomyopathy - a condition which made her heart double in size and risk giving out within a year.

But 10 years later, at the age of 12, Hannah, from Mountain Ash in Rhondda Cynon Taf, was experiencing serious health problems as a side effect of the immunosuppressant drugs she was taking to prevent rejection of the donor organ.The donor heart was able to take over most of the role of pumping blood around Hannah's body, effectively allowing her own beating heart to rest.

Hannah had developed tumours that had begun to spread and needed chemotherapy treatment.

For this to work, the doctors had to reduce Hannah's immunosuppressants. But this led to her body rejecting the donor heart".