|
 "It was twice the magic," said Juan Miguel Gil Jaurena, head of
children's cardiac surgery at the Madrid hospital, explaining that
such techniques did not exist for young children three years ago and
had never before been used on a baby so small.
The case opens the way to saving more infants who need heart
transplants and are too young to use ventricular support devices
until they get a compatible donor.
The operation was complicated because the donor was at a hospital in
a different Spanish region and the heart had stopped beating for a
few minutes, requiring a recovery procedure. The hospital did not
disclose details about the donor.
The baby girl, Naiara, had been diagnosed with a congenital heart
disease before she was born and weighed only 3.2 kilograms when the
surgery was performed.
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 "She is the smallest baby we've
had for a heart transplant, and 24 hours before
the surgery her condition worsened a lot. Had
she not got a heart (transplant), she would
probably not be here," said Manuela Camino, head
of the children's cardiac transplant unit.
Naiara is recovering at the hospital.
With 37.4 donors per million people, Spain last
year was the world leader in transplants,
according to the global database on donation and
transplantation of the World Health Organization
(WHO) handled by the Spanish Transplant
Organization (ONT).
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, editing by Inti
Landauro, Andrei Khalip and Ed Osmond)
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