6-yr-old Brit girl survives 228 days with artificial heart

Jul 10, 2010 |

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A six-year-old British girl lived for more than seven months with an artificial heart pumping blood around her body to keep her alive.
Alice lived with the device, called a Berlin Heart, for 228 days.
The girl had been ill almost since birth. The left side of her heart did not work properly, meaning she would eventually need a transplant.
But her parents Liz and David, Hopkiss, of Yarnton in Oxfordshire, refused to give up on her. The machine was eventually fitted, at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in central London. Shortly after the transplant, she developed cancer due to the strong drugs she was taking. But she defeated the cancer and is now enjoying a normal life. Her father David said she is his "dancing princess".
"I pinch myself every day. We have been through high and lows and we have come through," the Telegraph quoted David as saying. Mr Hopkiss, who is chief executive of a pharmceutical technology company in Oxford, said: "We wouldn't be here without the wonderful gift of a family who we will never know. We think about them every day“, he added.

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