Rose Marie Bentley Lived For 99 Years With Her Organs In All The Wrong Places And Never Knew About It.
Rose Marie Bentley had an unusual
anatomy but neither her family nor Bentley knew about the potentially
life-threatening condition until after she died on Oct. 11, 2018
On an early spring day in 2018, the
faint smell of formaldehyde floating in the air, 26-year-old medical student
Warren Nielsen and four of his classmates prepped a cadaver in the chilly
dissection lab at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Bentley's
vein was on the left, and instead of terminating directly into the heart, which
is typical, "her vein continued through her diaphragm, along the thoracic
vertebrae, up and around and over the aortic arch and then emptied into the
right side of her heart," Walker said.
"Normally
speaking, none of us have a vessel that does that directly," he added.
That
wasn't the only irregularity Walker and his students found in Bentley's body.
Numerous
veins that typically drain the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were
either missing or sprouting from an unusual spot. Her right lung had only two
lobes, instead of the standard three, while the right atrium of her heart was
twice normal size.
"And
instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on
the right," Walker said. "Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly
on the right, was predominantly on the left. Her spleen was on the right side
instead of its normal occurrence on the left. And then the rest of her
digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well."
Similar
groups of five gathered around bodies on the other 15 tables in the anatomy
class, all eager to explore the mysteries of the human body they had seen only
in textbooks.
The
cadaver assigned to Nielsen's team was a 99-year-old woman who had died of
natural causes. Her name was Rose Marie Bentley, but the students didn't know
that then. To honor and respect the privacy of those who offer their bodies to
science, no further details are given medical students about the person who had
once inhabited the body lying on the silvery slab before them.
But
as the students and their professors were soon to find out, Bentley was
special, so special she deserved her own unique spot in medical literature and
history books.
The
reason? A condition called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most vital
organs are reversed -- almost like a mirror inside the body. That, along with a
host of other weird but wonderful abnormalities, made Bentley a sort of medical
unicorn
"I think the odds of finding another person like her
may be as remote as one in 50 million," said assistant professor Cameron
Walker, who teaches the Foundations of Clinical Anatomy class at Oregon Health
and Science University. "I don't think any of us will ever forget it,
honestly."
This Is Totally Backwards'
On
this March day, the assignment was to open the body's chest cavity to examine
the heart. It wasn't long before Nielsen's group began to question their
fledgling medical knowledge.
"Her
heart was missing a large vein that's normally on the right side," Nielsen
said.
Bewildered,
he and his team called the professors over and asked: "Where's the
inferior vena cava? Are we missing it? Are we crazy?"
"And
they kind of rolled their eyes," Nielsen said, "Like, 'how can these
students miss this big vessel?' And they come over and that's when the hubbub
starts. They're like 'Oh, my God, this is totally backwards!' "
A
typical body has a large vein called the vena cava that follows the right side
of the vertebral column, curving under the liver and emptying deoxygenated
blood into the heart.
When Bentley had her gallbladder
removed about a decade later, it was on the opposite side of where it should
have been, Allee said.
"She had three organs removed
during her life, but only a surgeon who removed her appendix recorded its
unusual location in their notes. None of Bentley’s children were aware of their
mother’s transposed organs, and they believe she didn’t know, either,"
said the release.
Mark Hankin, Ph.D., a professor of
anatomy at OHSU, presented the woman’s case on April 8 at the 2019 American
Association of Anatomists Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology.
When Bentley had her gallbladder
removed about a decade later, it was on the opposite side of where it should
have been, Allee said.
"She had three organs removed
during her life, but only a surgeon who removed her appendix recorded its
unusual location in their notes. None of Bentley’s children were aware of their
mother’s transposed organs, and they believe she didn’t know, either,"
said the release.
Mark Hankin, Ph.D., a professor of
anatomy at OHSU, presented the woman’s case on April 8 at the 2019 American
Association of Anatomists Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology.
Similar groups of five gathered around bodies on the other 15 tables in the anatomy class, all eager to explore the mysteries of the human body they had seen only in textbooks.
The
cadaver assigned to Nielsen's team was a 99-year-old woman who had died of
natural causes. Her name was Rose Marie Bentley, but the students didn't know
that then. To honor and respect the privacy of those who offer their bodies to
science, no further details are given medical students about the person who had
once inhabited the body lying on the silvery slab before them.
But
as the students and their professors were soon to find out, Bentley was
special, so special she deserved her own unique spot in medical literature and
history books.
The
reason? A condition called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most vital
organs are reversed -- almost like a mirror inside the body. That, along with a
host of other weird but wonderful abnormalities, made Bentley a sort of medical
unicorn
"I think the odds of finding another person like her may be as remote as one in 50 million," said assistant professor Cameron Walker, who teaches the Foundations of Clinical Anatomy class at Oregon Health and Science University. "I don't think any of us will ever forget it, honestly."
This Is Totally Backwards'
On
this March day, the assignment was to open the body's chest cavity to examine
the heart. It wasn't long before Nielsen's group began to question their
fledgling medical knowledge.
"Her
heart was missing a large vein that's normally on the right side," Nielsen
said.
Bewildered,
he and his team called the professors over and asked: "Where's the
inferior vena cava? Are we missing it? Are we crazy?"
"And
they kind of rolled their eyes," Nielsen said, "Like, 'how can these
students miss this big vessel?' And they come over and that's when the hubbub
starts. They're like 'Oh, my God, this is totally backwards!' "
A
typical body has a large vein called the vena cava that follows the right side
of the vertebral column, curving under the liver and emptying deoxygenated
blood into the heart.
When Bentley had her gallbladder
removed about a decade later, it was on the opposite side of where it should
have been, Allee said.
"She had three organs removed
during her life, but only a surgeon who removed her appendix recorded its
unusual location in their notes. None of Bentley’s children were aware of their
mother’s transposed organs, and they believe she didn’t know, either,"
said the release.
Mark Hankin, Ph.D., a professor of
anatomy at OHSU, presented the woman’s case on April 8 at the 2019 American
Association of Anatomists Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology.
When Bentley had her gallbladder
removed about a decade later, it was on the opposite side of where it should
have been, Allee said.
"She had three organs removed
during her life, but only a surgeon who removed her appendix recorded its
unusual location in their notes. None of Bentley’s children were aware of their
mother’s transposed organs, and they believe she didn’t know, either,"
said the release.
Mark Hankin, Ph.D., a professor of
anatomy at OHSU, presented the woman’s case on April 8 at the 2019 American
Association of Anatomists Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology.
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