Medical miracle: Women lived to 99 with situs inversus and levocardia

It is not less than a medical miracle that a woman survived for 99 years with an extremely rare condition called situs inversus with levocardia where her vital most of her organs like liver, stomach including other abdominal organs were reversed right to left.

This is a story of Rose Marie Bentley who lived almost her entire life with such an extraordinary condition. On the outside, her life seemed absolutely normal until the anomaly was discovered by the medical students of Oregon Health & Science University after her death.

Having her organs donated to Oregon Health & Science University, a team of medical students found that the lady lived her entire life with most of her organs at the wrong side of her body except her heart. The students were awestruck after they noticed that her internal organs excluding her heart were exactly the mirror reflection of the organs of a normal human body.

“I knew something was up, but it took us a while to figure out how she was put together,” said gross anatomy instructor Cam Walker in a statement to the media.

During the investigation students also came to know that she also had an abnormality called a hiatal hernia, which is when the upper bit of the stomach protrudes through the diaphragm. Additionally, her superior vena cava (SVC) vein was unusually long. Instead of collecting deoxygenated blood from the head, neck, and upper limbs, Bentley’s superior vena cava also collected deoxygenated blood from her rib cage wall and abdominal cavity. Her three liver veins also had their own unique function, draining directly into her heart’s right atrium instead of passing first through the inferior vena cava.

The team presented their findings over the weekend at this year’s gathering of the American Association of Anatomists at the Experimental Biology meeting.

The woman did not have any other chronic condition except her arthritis. She three organs removed including her appendix, which the operating surgeon noted as it having an abnormal location.

The condition occurs just once in around 22,000 live births of the population. Only one in 50 million born with is disorder can barely reach adulthood, unlike Bently who lived for 99 years unaware of the strangeness of her body which is the most interesting part of the story.