VietNamNet Bridge – A 21-year-old man was accidentally discovered to have a broken heart. It turns out that the man was butted to his chest by a buffalo when he was only two.
Nam, 21, from Thanh Hoa province, was hospitalized to the Hanoi-based National Cardiovascular Hospital early this week. The patient had trouble in breathing, felt painful in his chest. X-ray scan showed that his heart was abnormally big and it was pushed to the right, around 15cm far from the normal position. The heart was also covered by clotted blood and solution. As the result, Nam’s heart was three times bigger than usual.

Doctors carried out a surgery on December 7 to mend its hearth. The three-hour operation took place smoothly.

According to Nam’s family, he was butted to his chest by a buffalo when he was playing in the family’s yard. He has been living normally for the last 19 years until he could not resist against pain, which appeared very often in the last one month, and was taken to the National Cardiovascular Hospital.
Dr. Duong Duc Hung from the National Cardiovascular Hospital, who performed the operation on Nam, said that this is an uncommon case in both Vietnam and the world. Without a timely operation, the patient would have been dead if the solution womb around his heart broke.

“Normally, when the heart is broken and the patient is not  provided with emergency aid quickly, he will be able to live for several minutes. But this patient has lived for nearly 20 years with a broken heart,” Dr. Hung said.

The patient is recovering very well and he can leave hospital next week.

Man Chi