• Question: What is the strangest medical condition you have come across in your job?

    Asked by aliballybaba to Christina on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      Hiya,

      Well one of the strangest to me was something called “transposition of the great arteries”… in healthy people, the heart pumps blood without much oxygen in through the lungs where it gets more oxygen and then pumps that nice oxygen rich blood round the body so we get all the oxygen we need everywhere. But some babies are born with their arteries connected the wrong way round (basically a plumbing mistake) so that the heart just keeps pumping the oxygen rich blood through the lungs and the blood without much oxygen round the body over and over again… for these babies, they need to have major open heart surgery within about a day of birth to connect everything round the right way again! It’s pretty extreme, but actually about 97-98% of these babies recover and go on to have normal, healthy lives…

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