Cape Town - The 59-year-old woman who became the world's first patient to undergo the non-surgical closure of a leaking heart valve was doing well in hospital, Mediclinic SA said on Friday.
“(Marianna Cronjé) was transferred from the critical care unit to a general nursing unit this 1/8Friday 3/8 morning,” the hospital said in a statement.
Doctors performed the operation on Saturday, through a thin tube inserted into her groin. She was born with her heart on the right side of her chest.
Cronjé, from Stellenbosch, had rheumatic fever when she was young, and had undergone four open-heart operations in the past 40 years - the last one in 2000.
When her heart valve started leaking, doctors could not operate on her again and her condition deteriorated to the point where she could do nothing for herself.
Her cardiologist, Dr Hellmuth Weich, would present her case to the World Paediatric and Adult Cardiology Congress in Cape Town in February. - Sapa