SCHOOLBOY IS THRIVING
Walking for miles and clambering up mountains, Aaron Brown looks like any happy, healthy 10-year-old.
Yet mum Stephanie will never take moments like these for granted as it wasn’t long ago her son was so frail that playing outside like other children was impossible.
Aaron was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome – meaning he had only half a heart – and underwent his first life-saving surgery at just a few hours old.
At three years old, medics predicted he would not survive the year. Even af ter Aaron pa ssed that mi le s t one , Stephanie, from Bo’ness, near
Falkirk, feared her boy would become one of the 25 per cent of children who die while waiting for a heart transplant.
But thanks to pioneering technology, Aaron’s life was saved when he became the first child in the world to receive a “heart in a box” transplant.
Cardiac experts used the container to keep his donor organ pumping outside the body – in a move that could help other children in need of a new heart on the transplant waiting list.
Stephanie, 28, said: “This is like all our dreams came true. Life has been a rollercoaster ever since Aaron was born. There’s always been a constant worry that if he overexerts his heart will just stop
Amy Sharpe and Martyn Halle
■ working. Aaron’s life now is transformed. The kid they thought wouldn’t survive 24 hours when he was born is now playing football, going to school full-time, can walk for miles and even climbs mountains.”
Normal ly a heart that has been retrieved for transplant remains in suspended animation on ice between the donor and recipient.
But in a major breakthrough hearts taken from donors are being kept pumping in a special box between donor and recipient.
Aaron could have died waiting for a new heart if the technology hadn’t been used by a team of surgeons from Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital and the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.
Care worker Stephanie added: “He was very frail, chalky white and had blue lips for two years till he got his new heart. You read of kids dying on the list and you worry that your kid could be one of the unlucky ones.”
At just a few hours old, Aaron was rushed from Stirling Hospital, where he was born, to Glasgow Children’s Hospital for emergency surgery to insert balloons into his narrowed arteries to improve blood flow.
Recalling the terrifying incident in February 2011, Stephanie said: “It was very much touch and go if he’d survive. I