Freddy Vallender, 4, flies to US for heart operation

A four-year-old boy with a heart tumour is flying to the US for life-saving surgery after a crowd-funding campaign.

Freddy Vallender, from Bawdrip, near Bridgwater, Somerset, is due to fly to Boston after his parents raised £90,000 for an operation to remove the lump.

His condition causes dangerous heart rhythms, leading to cardiac arrest.

Boston Children's Hospital is the only place in the world to offer the treatment which will allow Freddy to live a normal life.

Freddy suffered a cardiac arrest when he was four months old and was saved by paramedics and a neighbour who performed CPR.

It was discovered he had a fibroma, 5cm by 3.5cm, filling two thirds of his ventricle.

He has since had three heart operations and a defibrillator implant.

'Changes everything'

Boston Children's Hospital has performed similar surgery on seven other children with dangerous arrhythmias.

Freddy's mother, Cathryn, said removing his tumour would mean his defibrillator could be removed and he would no longer be dependent on medication.

She said: "The last six months have been incredible, amazing, stressful, overwhelming... but, with the help of our friends and family and the community, we have done it.

"We thought we had a future of hospital appointments, medication for life, a possible heart transplant in years to come, not being able to go abroad and having to be very careful where we went away in this country because we couldn't be too far away from a hospital with a resuscitation department.

"It changes everything for us as a family."