Transplant escape and David’s hale and hearty

A TEENAGE boy has undergone pioneering surgery which has saved him from having to have a heart transplant.

David Saunders from Fort Augustus was born with a rare type of congenital heart disease. When he was a baby, doctors told his parents, Dave and Alison, that he would need a series of operations and a heart transplant when he was older, a fact they chose not to tell their son when he was growing up.

But medical advances meant that David, 16, a pupil at Kilchuimen Academy, was a candidate for complex surgery to “re-plumb” his heart without having to have a transplant. The nine-and-a-half-hour operation, which was performed at Yorkhill hospital in Glasgow a few days before his 16th birthday, was a success and David is now recovering at home. It was only the second time such an operation had been carried out on a youngster in Scotland.

“I had no idea I might need a transplant and I’m glad that I didn’t,” he said. “I always knew I had a heart condition and I couldn’t run around and play football whilst I was growing up. But I never knew that would’ve been the outcome if surgery techniques hadn’t advanced.”