Heart transplant for a two-month-old Spanish infant

Spanish Hospital Gregorio Marañón announced that a pioneering surgery saved the life of a two-month-old Spanish girl, after doctors were able to transplant her small heart that had stopped beating in the body of a donor carrying a different blood type.

"The magic has become magic," said Juan Miguel Jaurina, head of the Department of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Madrid Hospital, explaining that these techniques had not been present in small child surgeries three years ago nor were they ever used with a small infant.

This condition opens up hope for saving the lives of more infants who need heart transplants and are too young to use heart function support devices until they receive a suitable donor.

The operation was complicated because the donor, whose identity was not disclosed by the hospital, was in a hospital in another Spanish region, and the heart had stopped beating for a few minutes, which required a procedure to restore him to life.

The baby, Nayara, was diagnosed with congenital heart disease before she was born and weighed only 3.2 kg when the surgery was performed.

Manuela Camino, head of the children's heart transplant unit, said that this child is considered "the youngest baby to undergo a heart transplant," adding that her condition worsened a lot 24 hours before the operation, and that if she had not undergone this heart transplant, she would not have been present now, most likely.

Nayara is recovering from the operation in hospital.

With 37.4 donors per million people, last year Spain became a world leader in the field of organ transplantation, according to the World Health Organization's global database related to donation and organ transplantation.