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Man’s heart spins in his chest after motorbike accident

X-ray (left) shows the heart after it had rotated and (right) shows it back in its normal position 24 hours later. Image courtesy of The New England Journal of Medicine

Although his heart spun ninety degrees after a bike accident, an Italian man survived and was left with no long-term damage to his heart.

A 48-year-old Italian man has survived having his heart spun ninety degrees as a result of a motorbike accident, a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine claims.

Doctors at the emergency department who treated the crash victim discovered that his heart was in an unusual place when they tried to listen to his heart sounds and rhythms.

"I had never seen anything like it," Dr Gregory Fontana, chairman of the department of cardiothoracic surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, who wasn't involved in the case, told Live Science. "What's unique about this case is the way the heart rotated so far in the other direction, and the patient was still awake and alert."

The 48-year-old man's major vessels also rotated after the crash. Image (left) shows them after the rotation and (right) once they had returned to their normal position Image courtesy of The New England Journal of Medicine


The discovery was made after the emergency ward doctors X-rayed the man’s chest and carried out a CT scan, which revealed that his heart had rotated 90 degrees to the right and was sitting on the right side of his chest.

Although it's uncommon, it is possible to find someone's heart on the right side of the chest — for example, in people with some birth defects, Fontana said
The cause of the mysterious rotating heart was a buildup of air, Fontana surmised. The treating doctors found that crash injuries to the man’s lungs caused air to leak and build up in the chest cavity, according to the report.

After the air was drained, the man’s heart rotated back to the left and, within 24 hours, was back to its original position with the only effects of the freak rotation being obstructed blood vessels and a drop in blood pressure.

Although the man was lucky to escape without any long-term damage to his heart, he did suffer broken ribs and required emergency surgery to remove a ruptured spleen.
The Italian patient is not the first to have a bizarre heart condition reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Last year, the journal reported the case of a woman whose serious heart condition was diagnosed after her heart started pulsating violently, with the pulses visible on her neck.

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