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Show New Type Operation Saves Rheumatic Fever Victim PHILADELPHIA, Pa. A new type heart operation has been performed per-formed on a 22-year-old girl rheumatic rheu-matic fever victim. The heart of Lorene Bean of Hazleton, Pa., was damaged nine years ago by rheumatic fever. For two years after she was stricken she was bedfast. Then she became well enough to finish grade school and later took a clerk's job in a store. Three years ago she was forced to return to her bed. Surgeons said she had mitral regurgitation. re-gurgitation. The mitral valve, they explained, was damaged and remained re-mained open, alowing the blood to regurgitate, or leak back, into the left auricle and into the lungs. In a two hour operation, one surgeon sur-geon cut from Miss Bean's heart a piece of pericardium, the membranous membra-nous sac which covers the heart. The tissue, about the size of the palm of a man's hand, was rolled up like a cigaret and threaded into a wire probe. Then the probe was forced through the wall of the heart and out the other side, leaving a flap of tissue in the left ventricle beneath the mitral valve. The tissue, working like a check valve, prevents the blood ftom leaking leak-ing back into the left auricle, while blood flowing in the proper direction direc-tion pushes the flap away. |