Situs Inversus is a condition which affects 0.01% (1 in 10,000) of the world's population and often goes undiagnosed. It is not life threatening, though the condition correlates with an increased likelihood of congenital heart defects. Situs Inversus is usually only discovered during an X-ray, when the radiologist notices that all of the patient's internal organs are reversed.
In the normal human body, the heart skews to the left of the body, the liver is mostly on the right, and the spleen is on the left. In the inverted body, all organs are symmetrically reversed. The condition is usually caused by a recessive gene. However, 25% of people with the condition also have primary ciliary dyskinesia, which causes the cilia (which determine organ arrangement during development) to malfunction.
Recent years have brought us many interesting stories of Situs Inversus. In 1979, the government sentenced Ginggaew Lorsoungnern to death by firing squad. After her "execution", she was found alive and screaming in the morgue. None of the bullets had pierced her heart.
Rose Maria Bentley lived to 99 with no complications and donated her body to science. I was only when an anatomy student noticed the position of her blood vessels that her condition was discovered. The entire cadaver was then used to study the phenomenon.
Even one American professional athlete is known to have reversed organs. Randy Foye played for the NBA from 2006-2017, playing most recently for the Brooklyn Nets. His condition never affected his performance.
Catherine O'Hara, Enrique Iglesias, and Donny Osmond are the most famous people in the world with Situs Inversus.
There aren't very many medical anomalies that I wish I had: ambidextrousness (both hands are equally strong), Distichiasis (two rows of eyelashes, notably visible on Elizabeth Taylor), Heterochromia (each eye is a different color), and Situs Inversus. I just think it would be fun to brag about my reversed organs at parties.
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hahah me too Jocelyn..
If you saw this and checked to see if your heartbeat was on the left, I have nothing to say; I did that, too.