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Girl receives heart transplant after two-year wait

BBC GraceBBC
Grace Westwood underwent the 12-hour operation at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle

A two-year-old girl who became the first child in the UK to use a mobile heart allowing her time out of hospital has finally received a transplant.

Grace Westwood, from Birmingham, had waited more than two years for a donor and had been kept alive with an artificial organ.

She underwent the 12-hour operation at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital after a match was found.

Saying thank you "just wasn't enough" for the donor family, her parents said.

Grace's mother Becci Jones said: "It's really hard. How do you put into words the gift they've given us? They've lost a child and have given us so much."

Grace was born in November 2019 with an impairment in her heart's left ventricle, and became seriously ill in March 2020.

During the first coronavirus lockdown the following year she was airlifted from Birmingham's Children's Hospital to the specialist site in Newcastle and put on the heart transplant waiting list.

Her parents had to travel by car due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Grace and family
Grace, pictured with her brother and mother at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital

Grace was then given a special artificial heart unit in 2021, which could be attached to her pushchair so she and her family could go outside and visit the park rather than having to stay in the hospital ward.

Now the family are looking to the future after the toddler finally received a donor heart.

"You take each day as it comes and concentrate on Grace, keeping her healthy", said her father Darren Westwood.

"You do wake up in the morning and think 'is today the day?'

"When it did come it just felt surreal. Everyone was in tears because we had been waiting for so long."

Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Grace Westwood with her father DarrenNewcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Grace, shown here with her dad Darren, had earlier been fitted with a mechanical heart

Consultant paediatric cardiologist Abbas Khushnood said: "It's very unique and rare that we see situations where patients have to be on a mechanical support device to keep the heart pumping for such a long period of time.

"Somebody like Grace who has had such a long journey eventually getting a heart transplant just gives us more hope for younger children with heart failure to be able to get a heart transplant."

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