medicine
A tiny heart pump gave Macs back his smile
Doctors told his parents to prepare for the end. Then came a machine.
A baby boy in Bristol is thriving on a mechanical heart pump while he waits for a transplant, after doctors told his parents to prepare for an end of life scenario. Macs Green suffered two cardiac arrests and was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy, a disease that can lead to heart failure. From a bed at Bristol Royal Children's Hospital, he was placed on a Berlin Heart, the only ventricular assist device of its kind available for infants. It uses air power to pump blood through the body while a patient awaits a donor organ. The first European recipient got one in 1990. By 2014, around 1,500 had been fitted to children. For Macs, the change was quick. "It means he can come off the drugs which have been sedating him," his father Dylan said. "He's smiling, he's responding to us. Before now, he's just been a small baby lying on a bed." His mother Catrin put it plainly. It felt like having their baby back.
