Just watched a PBS documentary entitled "9 Months That Made You" and in it they discussed Randy Foye's Situs Inversus which is a congenital condition in which the major visceral organs are reversed, or mirrored from their normal positions.

 

The normal arrangement of the internal organs is known as Situs Solitus while Situs Inversus is generally the mirror image of Situs Solitus.

 

Although cardiac problems are more common than in the general population, most people with Situs Inversus have no medical symptoms or complications resulting from the condition, and until the advent of modern medicine it was usually undiagnosed.

 

Situs Inversus is found in about 0.01% of the population, or about 1 person in 10,000, which I find rather interesting because since I've never heard of it I would have guessed that it was much rarer than this.

 

In the most common situation, Situs Inversus Totalis, it involves complete transposition (right to left reversal) of all of the abdominal organs. The heart is not in its usual position in the left chest, but is on the right, a condition known as dextrocardia (literally, right-hearted).

 

Because the relationship between the organs is not changed, most people with Situs Inversus have no medical symptoms or complications, although they should wear a medical identification tag to warn emergency medical staff that the patient's internal organs are reversed from normal so they can act accordingly, e.g. by listening for a heartbeat on the right rather than left side of the chest.

 

In rarer cases such as Situs Ambiguus or Heterotaxy, Situs cannot be determined.

 

In these patients, the liver may be midline, the spleen absent or multiple, and the bowel malrotated. Often, structures are duplicated or absent altogether. This is more likely to cause medical problems than Situs Inversus Totalis

I'm with you, I'm surprised it isn't far more rare than 1 in 10,000. Also like you, before this post, I had never heard of this before.

I'm with you, I'm surprised it isn't far more rare than 1 in 10,000. Also like you, before this post, I had never heard of this before.

 

Doesn't really belong in the NBA forum, but also discussed in this documentary, and even more rare of a condition, fashion model Melanie Gaydos has Ectodermal Dysplasia, a genetic disorder that affects the growth of teeth, nails, hair, pores, cartilage and bones.

 

She is interviewed in an interesting short video within this article.

 

Melanie Gaydos, model with ectodermal dysplasia storms fashion industry | Daily Mail Online