Why Great Ormond Street Hospital needs a new heart transplant unit

In 2002, there were five children waiting for new hearts – now there are 30

Great Ormond Street Hospital desperately needs a new specialist heart unit to cope with the number of seriously ill children waiting for heart transplant surgery, one of the country’s leading paediatric doctors has said.

Professor Andrew Taylor, director for cardiorespiratory services at GOSH, said the hospital could find itself having to turn children away if the new 14-bed unit is not completed.

Construction work on the unit has already begun, but GOSH needs more funding to kit out the state-of-the-art facility. The unit is one of the central pillars of The Independent’s Give to GOSH campaign, which has been backed by a “double your money” pledge by the Treasury.

Professor Taylor said the new unit was “vital” because medical developments meant babies with heart defects were surviving longer and required heart transplants as they got older. He said: “The increase in surgeries [for babies] is one of our successes. We get more children through those initial years now.”

While the number of transplant operations being carried out at GOSH and a second centre in Newcastle has stayed constant in recent years, the number of children requiring transplants has increased, especially in the past 12 months. So while there were only five children waiting for a heart transplant in 2002, there are currently 30 children waiting now. Sadly, around a third of all children who need a new heart will die before they get one.

One reason the hospital’s current heart unit is so busy is because many more children with serious heart conditions are surviving for longer. For example, children with the rare hypoplastic left heart syndrome, where the left ventricle does not develop properly, would previously have died as babies. Now they can be operated on at four days old, before further follow-on surgery before the child is two.

There have also been advances in mechanical hearts known as VADs (ventricular assist devices), such as the Berlin Heart or Heartware devices. These are keeping patients such as Elliott Livingstone – whose story The Independent is following as part of the Give to GOSH appeal – alive. But these advances also mean that more children are spending longer in hospital hooked up to the machines while they wait for a new heart.

Elliott is currently one of four children on VADs at GOSH in Bear Ward. They are getting excellent care, but Professor Taylor says around 60 children needing different heart operations could have been treated in the same time. “It is a dilemma we face. The new unit will alleviate pressure on that ward,” he said.

Professor Taylor added that if the new unit were not built he would have to have “very frank conversations” and tell parents that “it’s not possible for us to do any more” to save their critically ill child.

Professor Taylor added that the unit was important nationally because, alongside the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, it is one of only two hospitals in the UK that can carry out heart transplants on children. Last year, GOSH carried out 20 heart transplant and more than 600 open heart surgeries.

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