It was a case no one else was ready to take on – a heart condition so rare that even the Mayo Clinic has recorded just 30 cases in the past 20 years – and a patient with a history of going into cardiac arrest during surgical procedures. But for Dr Khaled Awad, Electrophysiologist and Interventional Cardiologist at Clemenceau Medical Center Hospital (CMC Hospital), it was a chance to give a woman her life back.
“Everybody was telling her, ‘we can’t do it’, but she was really suffering,” says Dr Awad. “For years, even with high dosages of anti-arrhythmia drugs, she would have a heart rate going up to 180 for many hours, every couple of days.” For people with her condition, this was potentially life-threatening, he says, because it could trigger sudden cardiac death.
[Dr Awad’s head shot goes here with the pull quote]
Born with dextro-transposition – a rare congenital heart defect where the position of the pulmonary artery and aorta are swapped – and the survivor