A city hospital has claimed to have performed a rare surgery on a 22-year-old woman, whose organs in the abdomen and the chest were placed in reversed position, like that of a mirror image.

The woman from Udhagamadalam was brought to a private hospital in the city where she underwent all tests. Doctors found that all the organs were trans positioned.

The heart was found on the right side, instead of the left side (dextrocardia in medical terminology). The liver was in the left side instead of right and the spleen in the right. Other visceral organs too were found in opposite sides.

“Known as dextrocardia situs inversus totalis, it occurs one in 10,000 people. The medical team diagnosed it and performed the surgery with an unusual speed and the patient was discharged two days after the surgery,” Dr V.P Shanmugasundaram, General surgeon of the private hospital said.

“The challenging part was to treat her physical condition called acute calculus cholecystitis, in other words known as an inflammatory disease of the gall bladder which, if not treated on time, has the potential to lead to various medical and surgical complications,” he added.

The woman’s husband, a farmer by profession, was not not aware of her condition.

“Only about 50 such cases have been reported so far around the world. Normally such surgeries take 60 minutes time, The fastest surgery took 35 minutes and in this case, the one done through laparoscopy was done in 30 minutes,” he added.