KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) – As the world continues to mourn actress Catherine O’Hara, a Knoxville cardiologist explained just how rare her was.
O’Hara had a condition called Citus Inversus Totalus. This means your heart is on your right side and every other organ in your chest and abdomen is flipped to the other side of your body, like a mirror image.
Dr. Ahmed Abdallah with Covenant Health says the condition only affects one in 10,000 people, and most may not even know they have it.
“Actually, most of the cases are asymptomatic and they are discovered, you know, incidentally with just an x-ray or an EKG. And this kind of triggers a further workup,” Abdallah said. “But most of these patients are living like healthy life. They don’t have symptoms.”
Abdallah said the condition can have associated congenital abnormalities and complications, so it’s important to make sure to get it checked out if you discover you or someone you know has it.
“It is important to, if someone was known for this or discovered this, to see a cardiologist and to have further work up with more imaging,” Abdallah said. “Most of the patients will just have this mirror image organs. That is interesting, but it shouldn’t impact their day-to-day life and activities. But our main issue is to make sure they don’t have this associated complications with it.”
Abdallah added that screening, especially for heart conditions, starts with your primary care physician. He said if your doctor feels like you are at high risk, they will refer you to a cardiologist.
Even though O’Hara did have this condition, she did not die from it. Multiple reports lister her cause of death as pulmonary embolism with rectal cancer as the underlying cause.
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