The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
90th birthday for oldest heart transplant patient
A90-year-old grandfather is the oldest surviving heart transplant patient in the UK, a hospital has said.
Ted Warner, who had a heart transplant in 1990, turned 90 in June and celebrated with his family yesterday after restrictions on gatherings eased.
The retired company boss, who lives near Leicester, is one of very few heart transplant patients in the UK ever to have reached the milestone birthday.
Others have lived for longer after their heart transplant operation than Mr Warner, with 37 years the current UK record.
But he is currently the oldest living heart transplant patient in the UK, according to Cambridge’s Royal Papworth Hospital, which performed the UK’s first successful heart transplant in 1979.
The hospital said it confirmed with NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), which has oversight of national data, that Mr Warner is the oldest person in the UK currently alive with a heart transplant.
Mr Warner was 59 and suffering from heart disease when he had his operation at Papworth Hospital, as it was then known.
“Heart transplants were still relatively new back then and something you read about in a paper or saw on the news,” he said.
“I never thought it would happen to me, you never do.”
He said that before his operation he could not work and “wasn’t really able to do anything because my health was so bad”. He said he was told he had around three weeks to live, and the next day received a call saying a donor heart had become available.
After his operation he said he could not believe how well he felt. “It was quite remarkable, my breathing was so much clearer,” he said.
In the years since his operation he has seen both of his sons, Neil and Adam, get married and he now has three grandchildren.
He plays golf and goes clay pigeon shooting twice a week, alongside his routine of immunosuppression medication which sees him take eight tablets each day.
“I am so grateful for the care I’ve received,” said Mr Warner. “The NHS really is the best in the world.”
He said of his donor: “You can’t ever put into words how kind, generous and unselfish he and his family are for donating his heart to somebody he doesn’t know.”
Mr Warner, whose wife Annette died in 2019, returns to Royal Papworth Hospital twice per year for his post-transplant check-ups.
Dr Jayan Parameshwar, who has worked in the hospital’s transplant unit since 1991 and was at Mr Warner’s birthday celebration, said: “Ted is a perfect advert for what heart transplantation can achieve.”
“The surgeon who performed Mr Warner’s operation, Mr Francis Wells, also attended the celebration, and it was the first time the two men had met since then. He still performs heart operations at Royal Papworth Hospital.