A Tale of Two Tell-Tale Hearts

The chest of an Italian man with two hearts

A miracle occurs when a man survives not one, but two simultaneous heart attacks

Heart Attacks occur when you have a blood clot in one of the arteries connected to your heart. Simply put, if you heart stops getting it's constant supply of blood and oxygen, then it will begin to fail. 

However, this 71 year old Italian man had two hearts - and both began to falter.

As strange as it may seem, having two hearts wasn't too odd around the 1990s since the equipment made to replace a heart was not only very large, and very expensive.

So, instead of taking the failing organ out, many doctors left it in while supporting it with an artificial or donated organ. 

Now in 2012, this process is rarely taken since the ventricular assist devices are much smaller and much more affordable. 

Another probable reason why people don't choose to have a second organ may be because if one failed, the other may go along as well, as is what happened to the man. 

Fortunately for everyone, he survived the attacks. 

Well, if I ever had to rely on some series of pipes, tubes and batteries connected to my internals, I'd rather die. Just searching for images of "Pacemakers" and "ventricular assist device" is gruesome enough for me.