Newcastle patient first child in UK to get mobile heart device

Darren Westwood said his daughter Grace will now be able to visit the park and see birds and animals

An 18-month-old girl has become the first child in the UK to be fitted with a mobile heart device which allows her to spend more time outside hospital.

Grace Westwood, a patient at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital, has been waiting for a heart transplant since last year.

The Berlin Heart driving unit, which helps blood flow, has a battery life of up to eight hours.

Her family said it was "amazing" to be able to take her to a nearby park.

The device, which looks like a suitcase and rests on two wheels, can be attached to a pushchair and means she no longer has to use a heavy machine which powered the pump.

That device, which she had been using since she arrived at the hospital in May last year, had a battery life of 20 to 30 minutes and meant the youngster could only leave the ward for very short periods of time.

'Listening to birds sing'

Her mother Becci Westwood, from Birmingham, said it was "overwhelming" for Grace to be the first patient in the UK to be given the unit.

"It's the little things she's missed out on - touching the grass, listening to the birds sing, seeing family properly instead of through a window," her father Darren Westwood added.

"We can take her to the playroom and we don't have to cut our time short. That's what we're looking forward to, although we still have to be careful."

Grace's mother Becci said the mobility offered by the machine was "amazing"

Experts at the Freeman Hospital described the device, which was developed in an international collaboration, as "game changing".

"Children with heart failure who need this kind of pump before their transplant have, since the beginning of this technology, been attached to a stationary, very heavy device for the weeks and months they're in hospital," said Dr Emma Simpson, consultant in paediatric cardiovascular intensive care medicine.

"Now this mobile device gives them much more freedom."

'Longest drive'

Grace was born in November 2019 with an impairment of the left ventricle and became seriously ill in March last year.

In May 2020, during the first coronavirus lockdown, she was airlifted from Birmingham's Children's Hospital to the specialist site in Newcastle and put on the heart transplant waiting list.

Her parents had to travel by car due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Other children treated at the Freeman Hospital are now also set to benefit from the mobile devices

"That was the longest drive of our lives, not knowing if she was going to make it," said Mrs Westwood, who has not left Newcastle since her daughter was admitted.

"She's leading as normal a life as she can and is amazing in herself. She loves everything and everyone and, while we've got to be careful with her, she's trying to walk, she's chatty and smiling all the time."