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A 14-year-old girl told Sky News that she feels “blessed to have a second chance at life” after receiving a heart transplant using a donor organ that had started beating again thanks to a new machine.
Freya Heddington was only the second child to have her life saved thanks to pioneering technology, which had previously been tested only on adults.
She is one of six young British men, aged 12 to 16, who have now undergone these types of transplants with the help of the heart machine in a box called the Organ Care System (OCS), in what They are the world’s first cases of NHS Doctors.
And all the transplants have occurred during the coronavirus pandemic.
Warning: the video at the end of this story shows a heart that a machine keeps alive
The heart transplants were performed at Great Ormond Street Hospital in central London.
The ‘game-changing’ technique, known as donation after circulatory death (DCD), has successfully expanded the donor pool and increased the number of transplants for eligible children in the UK by 50%.
Historically, donated hearts have been from brain-dead people, but their hearts are still beating, limiting the scope of how many transplants are possible.
And, on average, children have to wait two and a half times longer than adults for hearts to be available.
Not only does the DCD allow more hearts to be used, but it also allows them to be transported longer distances and gives surgeons and nurses more time.
Freya outside Great Ormond Street Hospital. Photo: Heddington family
Freya’s parents, Jason and Kati
Freya, from Bristol, received the transplant last February by surgeons at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London in collaboration with physicians at Royal Papworth Hospital after she was diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy.
This is where the muscular walls of the lower chambers of the heart stiffen and their movement contracts.
The rare condition caused him to suffer from shortness of breath, fainting and often feeling weak.
Freya said: “Before my transplant I was really out of breath, I was passing out, I couldn’t walk up the stairs. I could barely walk through my own school.
“Now I can go out, I no longer pass out, I’m not as out of breath and I can walk longer distances.”
She also describes feeling “in awe” that she was one of the first, saying, “I feel so lucky and blessed to have a second chance at life and to know that I have a future like my friends and family have.”
Using an OCS machine, doctors at Royal Papworth Hospital have restarted the hearts after they stopped beating
Freya’s parents were told to expect to wait up to two years for a transplant for their daughter and said they were “shocked” when they got the call eight weeks later.
Her father, Jason Heddington, said: “In the back of our minds it was the worst case scenario: this is our last Christmas with her, there is one more Christmas left, that was reality.”
His mother, Kati Heddington, said the new machine “gives hope to everyone, it gives hope to parents, and if we can get a call in eight weeks, hopefully it can happen to other people.”
Doctors at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire used an OCS machine to restart the hearts, and organs were successfully transplanted by the GOSH doctors.
After a person dies, the donor’s heart is recovered and placed in the OCS, where it is kept warm and 1.5 liters of the donor’s blood is pumped in one cycle and receives nutrients.
Doctors can also accelerate the heart rate by remote control if necessary.
The hearts were then flown to London to be transplanted.
Anna Hadley on the day of her operation. Photo: Hadley family
Anna left the hospital two weeks after the transplant. Photo: Hadley family
The first girl whose life was saved by the machine was Anna Hadley, now 16, of Worcester.
He had waited almost two years for his heart transplant after he was also diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy.
Within 24 hours of the five-hour operation last February, she was sitting up in bed. Fifteen days later, he left Great Ormond Street and was playing hockey in a matter of weeks.
“I feel normal again. There is nothing I cannot do now,” he told The Sunday Times.
“No one else in the world is doing this right now,” said Marius Berman, consultant cardiothoracic transplant surgeon at Royal Papworth.
“It has been an incredible multi-agency, multi-disciplinary team effort to make this possible, involving everyone from organ donation and recovery nurses, transplant coordinators, physicians and surgeons.
“Above all, none of this would be possible without the generosity of each donor and their families.”
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Warning: video shows the heart being kept alive by a machine
Jacob Simmonds, consultant cardiologist and transplant physician at Great Ormond Street Hospital, said: “With the DCD cardiac program we have unlocked more opportunities for donation, essentially doubling the number of transplants performed at GOSH in eligible patients weighing more than 20kg.
“It’s a game changer and work is already underway to make the technique suitable for our much younger and smaller patients.
“Ultimately, however, this still depends on families having conversations about their organ donation wishes and then, of course, the courage to consider making this precious life-saving gift at a time of unimaginable tragedy.”
Dr John Forsythe, Medical Director of Organ Donation and Transplant at NHS Blood and Transplant, said: “This new technique will save lives both here and around the world.
“It means that people can donate their hearts where it would not have been possible in the past, bringing patients on the waiting list to life.”
The advance is expected to allow a vast expansion in the number of donor hearts available, reduce postoperative complications, speed recoveries, increase transplant survival rates and save hundreds of lives.
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