Paul Harris reports on the international effort to save the life of a sick little boy...

Surgeons flew an artificial heart from Germany in a last-ditch attempt to save a little boy with a gigantic diseased heart.

A team of specialists, led by Oxford surgeon Stephen Westaby, used the contraption to keep the ten-year-old alive until a heart transplant could take place days later.

The boy had a hugely inflamed heart that would have killed him if surgeons had not acted swiftly.

Mr Westaby said today: "This is one of the nicest stories in the history of cardiac surgery because it really shows what one considerable, concerted international effort can do for an individual child. He was quite close to dying. The heart was absolutely gigantic - it should be one third of the size."

The remarkable international effort began last Monday when surgeons realised that a boy with an inflamed heart muscle needed an urgent transplant. The chances of an immediate transplant were negligible, so Mr Westaby was asked if a newly developed artificial heart, known as the Jarvik 2000, could be used in this child.

Time was against them and the boy was extremely sick, so Mr Westaby contacted the Berlin Heart Institute to fly over an external mechanical heart to keep the boy alive.

A party of five German doctors immediately boarded a Lear jet to Oxford with the device and it was implanted in the boy from Reading yesterday with just two hours to spare. The mechanical object has two pumps attached to each side of the heart which provide circulation throughout the body. As Mr Westaby added: "It is a really fearsome sight but it does work well."

The little boy had been stabilised, but he still suffered with an inflamed heart muscle that showed no sign of recovery. The artificial German heart was working well, but the boy's own very enlarged heart was not functioning and surgeons decided a transplant was their only option.

But even this was going to be extremely tricky. The operation was planned to take place at Great Ormond Street Hospital, but moving the power system keeping the Berlin heart going - that was the size of a washing machine - was too risky.

Even more remarkably, the little boy was given a normal heart transplanted from a 14-year-old boy with cystic fibrosis. A heart and lung donor was found for the cystic fibrosis sufferer and the five-hour 'heart swap' was completed on Sunday morning. The following day the boy was taken off his breathing machine and was in a stable condition. He was then transferred to Great Ormond Street to continue his recovery.

Mr Westaby added: "In two days the boy was completely transformed. He was wide awake, having been virtually unconscious when we took him to the operating room." Mr Westaby also thanked the German team for their help. He said: "It is only a matter of time before advances in technology produce an implantable medical device to substitute for the diseased heart. In some patients, giving the heart a rest promotes recovery, as for any other organ in the body.

"Through the type of international collaboration which helped this child we are now closer to a realistic artificial heart for widespread use in patients with heart failure."

This was the latest life-saving operation by the world-famous surgeon, who once left his own book-signing party to perform an urgent operation.

But to Mr Westaby, it was just another day in the office.

Yesterday he spent all day in theatre, performing back-to-back operations to quell the growing NHS waiting lists. The operations were complex and took many hours to complete.

But that is the nature of his job. A conveyer belt of patients needing urgent operations devour his day - leaving little time for food or catnaps.

Mr Westaby has spent a decade campaigning for improvements to heart treatment. Back in 1987, he pioneered plans for a new £4.1m heart unit for Oxford.

By 1989, he was hugely in demand, even leaving his own book launch to carry out urgent treatment. And in February 1993, Mr Westaby flew to Cape Town to operate on a two-year-old fighting for his life after a gas explosion in a black township.

He enjoys his high-profile position, using it to further medical breakthroughs and urge the NHS to improve patient care.

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