Children saved by world’s f irst ‘heart in a box’ transplant ops
SIX British children have been saved by pioneering transplant surgery in which beating donor hearts were delivered in boxes.
The ‘heart-in-a-box’ procedure is a first in the world and was yesterday hailed as ‘game-changing’ because it could double the number of young patients saved.
The machine allows a dead donor’s heart to be revived outside the body and kept beating in a hi-tech chamber as it is taken to a hospital.
Until now, paediatric transplants could only be carried out using organs taken from brain-dead donors whose hearts were still beating shortly before the procedure.
The new technology was developed by Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, which has been using the technique on adults since 2015.
Experts at the NHS trusts believe it can revolutionise child heart transplants worldwide, with requests for information already flooding in from Europe and the US.
With the number of children needing heart transplants in the UK growing, the procedure vastly raises the number of donors available.
It also increases the distance a donor heart can be transported and gives surgical teams more time to prepare.
Although only available for children over 20kg (about 3stone) the trusts have developed a prototype that could in future use a similar method for babies and infants.
Children face significantly longer waits for donors due to the scarcity of suitable organs.
Anna Hadley, 16, of Worcester, was the first child in the world to receive a new heart through the procedure in February 2020. The talented hockey player was diagnosed with the potentially fatal condition restrictive cardiomyopathy in January 2018 after collapsing in a PE class.
She had to stop playing sports as she became more ill over an agonising 20 months on the transplant list for the procedure. When a suitable donor was found, a team from the Royal Papworth sped across the country with specialist surgical kit to the hospital where the dying patient was located.
The heart was removed and placed into the Trans-Medics Organ Care System machine, where it was reanimated with a defibrillating pulse and pumped with blood.
The team then flew the beating heart in a helicopter to Great Ormond Street Hospital where a team was waiting to operate on Anna, then 15.
Jacob Simmonds, a consultant and transplant physician, said: ‘The stakes were high but there was added excitement and joy. This is the biggest news in paediatric heart transplants for nearly 20 years.’
Last spring, Freya Heddington, 14, of Bristol, became the second child to receive a heart using the box after suffering the same illness as Anna.
Yesterday Freya said: ‘I’m so grateful to my donor and their family for this second chance.
‘I am ecstatic I got such an amazing gift but it’s also upsetting to know someone died.’
Last year, 32 paediatric heart transplants were carried out in Britain. Over the past five years, 38 children have died waiting for a donor heart.
‘I am ecstatic I got such an amazing gift’