A 71-year-old man who turned up at an Italian hospital with symptoms of cardiac trouble surprised doctors when it was discovered that he had two hearts.
He had undergone a rare heart transplant seven years earlier in which a new organ was paired with the diseased one. The two hearts had developed independent rhythms and doctors attempted drug therapy to correct the problem.
While he was under the doctors’ watch, both of the man’s hearts stopped beating and he lost consciousness.
After a jolt with a heart defibrillator miraculously brought him back to life doctors replaced his pacemaker but left both hearts intact, capping one of the most bizarre medical cases in recent memory.
“We haven’t ever seen anything similar to this case before,” the New York Daily News quoted Dr Giacomo Mugnai as saying in an email to MSNBC.com.
The double-heart attack took place in 2010 and the man is still reportedly in a good condition and no further arrhythmias have since been reported.
This incident was reported in the latest issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine.