Heart surgery on baby aged just 17 hours sets world record

Malaysia Sun (ANI) Monday 6th February, 2012

A tiny fighter from UK is recovering in hospital after becoming the youngest person to have open-heart surgery.

Surgeons pieced together Jasmine Carr's heart when she was 17 and a half hours old after they decided she had only a 15 percent chance of survival.

And now Jasmine, who suffers from hypoplastic left heart syndrome, is out of intensive care and her parents, Jo and James, hope she will be home with them by April.

"Being told there is little chance of your daughter living is the most heartbreaking thing you can hear as a mother," the Mirror quoted mum Jo as saying.

"But thanks to some amazingly fast operating she has a future," the 27-year-old added.

The family's ordeal began when hospital cook Jo was told her baby had the condition, which occurs when one side of the heart fails to form properly, after her 20-week scan.

Doctors gave the couple three options - terminating the pregnancy, having the baby and watching her die in their arms or immediate surgery.

"It was a no-brainer - we had to go for the operation," Jo said.

On September 27 last year, Jo was induced at 37 weeks and gave birth to Jasmine, who weighed 5lb 13oz with a heart the size of a walnut.

She and husband James held her for 10 minutes before doctors rushed her to Newcastle's Freeman Hospital.

Dr Asif Hasan re-plumbed the heart and trained the right side to do the work of the left in an 11-hour op.

Jasmine suffered a cardiac arrest the following day and then spent almost three months in intensive care.

But just before Christmas last year, she was transferred to the high dependency ward and doctors are now confident of a full recovery.

On Monday last week she had another operation to widen an artery and her parents now hope to take her home in Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, in the next few months.

The previous youngest heart surgery patient was Rudy Maxwell-Jones, who was 36 hours old, at Birmingham Children's Hospital in July. (ANI)