Diagnosed two years ago with severe heart failure, a young woman less than 40 years old was told by the cardiologists and cardiac surgeon at Rabin Medical Center, where she was being treated, that she would need a heart transplant in order to survive. She was placed on the transplant list, but due to her obesity was not a good candidate and needed to lose weight before any marching heart could even be considered. In the meanwhile she underwent surgery where a left ventricular assist device (an artificial heart) was implanted, hopefully as a bridge until transplantation. She began to feel better but instead of losing weights she gained weight and there was now no possibility to consider heart transplantation, and her health situation began to deteriorate.

Without any other options she underwent Bariatric surgery at Rabin's Beilinson Hospital (gastric bypass for those severely overweight) and lost 38 pounds. With this weight loss her health situation, including her natural heart, improved so greatly that for the first time ever in Israel she was taken off the ventricular assist device and her only heartbeat was now her own.

Dr. Benjamin Medalion, Director, Heart and Lung Transplantation Unit, Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, RMC's Beilinson Hospital: "This is an extraordinary case where for the first time in Israel, and only several times around the world, a person's biological heart could once again function on its own after being placed on a left ventricular assist device (an artificial heart), which in almost all cases is only a bridge  to getting a new heart or a permanent solution".

Dr. Benjamin Medalion