Alfred Health News

Alfred surgeons have performed life-saving surgery on a five-year-old girl, making her the youngest and smallest patient in Australia to undergo a heart and double lung transplant.

The Alfred, home to the national centre for paediatric lung transplantation, agreed to take on Zoe’s challenging case.

As reported in the Herald Sun on Saturday (21 Feb 2015);

“To offer an operation and lifelong care to a five-year old who weighed about 12kg (which is about four times smaller than our average transplant patient) represented a challenge to the hospital, which is essentially an adult hospital,” Dr Glen Westall said.

Zoe was placed on the transplant waiting list, and began an anxious five month wait.

Finally, the call came. It was The Alfred.

Waiting for Zoe when she arrived at The Alfred was a gown and surgical cap that two nurses had specially handmade in her size from bright fabric.

Zoe was now in the hands of the country’s leading transplant surgeons.

But she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.Shortly after the operation began, her own heart stopped.

Surgeons had to work steadily and skilfully to resuscitate her and open her chest so that her organs could be removed.

Her new heart and lungs were placed in one block into her body.

Within a week Zoe was kicking a football down the ward.

And a week later, she returned home, free to be the girl that the disease had tried to dampen and, ultimately, destroy.

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