The biblical book of Ecclesiastes contains the following words: “The heart of the wise is on the right, and the heart of the fool is on the left” (chapter 10, verse 2). And although most theologians do not interpret this phrase literally, noting its allegorical meaning, it can be assumed that the existence of people with a heart on the right side has been known since ancient times. I wonder where most of these sages live?
Disease or not?
Modern medicine classifies this phenomenon as anomalies of intrauterine development. Dextrocardia - this name was given to him by scientists, because the word dexter is translated from Latin as "right", and cardio is in Greek "heart". In some people, there is a "mirror" arrangement of not only the heart, but also the liver, spleen, appendix, then we are talking about such a diagnosis as "organ transposition."
The famous Italian medical scientist Jerome Fabrice in 1606, during his anatomical studies, discovered the very first known case of dextrocardia. And in 1643, his colleague Marco Aurelio Severino described the transposition of organs, when all of them were located in a person "mirrored".
The heart of the unborn child begins to form already in the third week of pregnancy, it is then that it is determined where it will be: in the left or right side of the chest.
There is a debate about the causes of dextrocardia in the scientific community. Over the years, everything was blamed for: infectious diseases; wrong lifestyle of the expectant mother; fetal injury during intrauterine development. Now, most scientists are inclined to believe that people are born right-handed as a result of mutations in the HAND, ZIC3Shh, ACVR2, Pitxz genes. Moreover, such a rare feature can be inherited.
Doctors reassure patients with dextrocardia and their relatives: if a person does not have other congenital heart defects and intrauterine developmental abnormalities, then he can live peacefully, study and work on an equal basis with everyone. Many right-handed people live to old age, and some of them do not even realize that their internal organs are "mirror-like" until they turn to doctors.
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They are among us
Cases of dextrocardia have been noted by specialists in many countries of the world, including Russia. For example, Nina Nikolaevna Usacheva from Volgograd told reporters that she had changed her eighties and did not experience any heart problems. And in Ufa, two such unique people live at once: Alexander Ivanov and Irina Popova, in Kazan Tatyana Aivenova is known for this individual feature.
Similar cases were reported in other countries of the former USSR, including Kazakhstan and Ukraine. So, a resident of Zaporozhye, Sergei Anatolyevich Kulikov, once frightened a nurse who wanted to listen to his heartbeat, but on the left side did not hear anything. The girl even called an ambulance.
Alexander Statsyuk from the village of Olyka, Volyn region, almost died of appendicitis in childhood, since his characteristic pain was not on the right, like most patients, but on the left. And for a long time the doctors could not understand what was the matter. And the man never complained about his “mirror” heart.
Romanian Zhenica Neagovic from the village of Vama-Buzeului learned about the transposition of her organs only at the age of 44, when she first consulted a doctor. The doctors took her under supervision out of professional curiosity; they have no fears for her health.
Cypriot Christos Georgis from the small town of Anaya passed away in early 2007, when he was already 87. An elderly man became aware of his own dextrocardia only at the age of 63.
From time to time in the international media there is information about the birth in different countries of children with "mirror" located organs. For example, such cases are recorded in Israel, Germany, Australia and the United States.
How many people like that
July 2007 American Journal of Cardiology. (The American Journal of Cardiology) published the results of a large-scale scientific study conducted by a group of scientists: Claudine M. Bohun, James E. Potts, Brett M. Casey, George GS Sandor. The article was titled "A Study of Populations of Cardiac Malformations and Outcomes Associated with Dextrocardia."
The participants in this study found that cases of dextrocardia are indeed very rare among the population of our planet. On average, only one in 12 thousand 19 people is born with an orthodoxy. In other words, only about 0.01% of the world's inhabitants can have this unique feature.
According to the UN, on October 31, 2011, the number of representatives of our species exceeded 7 billion. About 7.6 billion people now live on the planet. If we divide them by 12 thousand, then even minus congenital pathologies that can lead to death, it turns out that there are about 600 thousand right-hearted people among us.
By the way, doctors say that dextrocardia is accompanied by congenital heart defects only in 5-10% of cases.
Where do they live
There are simply no exact statistics for all people whose heart is located on the right side of the chest. It is known that the frequency of dextrocardia cases in different countries of the world varies: somewhere one such phenomenon occurs for every 8 thousand inhabitants, and somewhere - only for every 25 thousand people.
The international research project Diseasemaps creates worldwide maps of chronic and rare diseases. Each person can register on this medical Internet resource if some unique feature is identified in his body.
So, on the "World map of dextrocardia" 79 patients are marked, of which 37 are women. That is, the location of the heart does not correlate with the patient's gender. Here are some dry statistics:
Great Britain - 22;
USA - 21;
India -5;
Greece - 4;
Philippines - 4;
Russia - 3;
Germany - 3;
Israel - 3;
Australia - 3;
Canada - 2;
Spain - 2;
Pakistan - 1;
New Zealand - 1;
Mauritius Island - 1.
If we talk about Latin America and Africa, then on each of these continents there were only 2 cases of dextrocardia.
Of course, these are only approximate data, anonymously reported by the patients themselves on their own initiative. But it is immediately striking: not a single resident of such densely populated countries as Japan and China, where the level of medical diagnostics is quite high, has declared his sincerity.
In addition, in the number of cases of dextrocardia in the world, Great Britain and those countries that have been colonies of this European power for many years are confidently leading. It is possible that in the United States, most of the people with "mirror" organs are descendants of British immigrants.
Orynganym Tanatarova