Doctors perform groundbreaking heart surgery on young girl

Five-year-old Ekin Ada Işık was reborn after a miraculous surgery that involved removing her heart from her chest to remove a life-threatening tumor before transplanting the heart back to its place.

Ekin Ada was found to have a tumor in her heart at 32 weeks in the womb, which grew to the size of her heart by the time she was 5 years old. Last October, Ekin Ada underwent a meticulous surgery at Koç University Hospital poised to make its mark on world medical literature.

During the eight-hour surgery, Ekin Ada's heart was taken out of her chest and the tumor was removed on the operating table before it was transplanted back.

Explaining that it was impossible to operate with the heart in place due to the passage of a vital vessel through the tumor, Doctor Afksendiyos Kalangos emphasized that they chose to operate by removing the heart by taking a huge risk.

"Together with Doctor Yılmaz Zorman, we held our breath, separated the tumor from the heart muscle as if peeling onion skins. We found the thin, 1-millimeter coronary artery passing through the tumor and meticulously separated it from the tumor. We put the repaired heart back in place," Kalangos said.

Zorman, who said he had not encountered such surgery before, explained, "We did a literature review together and could not find a patient of this age with such a diagnosis who underwent successful surgery. A successful surgery and auto-transplantation in a child of this age are rare."

Explaining that Ekin Ada, who had the risk of sudden death due to rhythm disorders was in no condition to wait for a transplant, Zorman said, "If you transplant a heart from a cadaver, you have another healthy organ. In auto-transplantation, that is, transplantation from the patient himself,...