Charlie Douthwaite was born with a rare condition in the UK. His heart was not fully developed and was waiting for a transplant, which finally took place at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.
During the pregnancy of his mother, she went for a regular check-up in the 20th week, where doctors found that the unborn baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Because of this illness, Charlie's left side of the heart did not develop properly. He also had a narrow aorta and a hole between two of the chambers of the heart as told by British Heart Foundation's Facebook post.
However, when doctors decided that Charlie can't survive without a new organ, they finally started looking for a donor soon after they found the anomaly inside the womb. Although the waiting list for the organ donation is huge, as it has 6,500 other people's names, the new-born got lucky in this case when doctors found a match with a donor within two days after birth and he became the youngest person on the organ donor list in the UK.
Charlie had to undergo a nine-hour-long open heart surgery when he was three days old at Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. Doctors are hoping that he will recover soon to return home by this New Year Eve.
According to the Facebook post by the newborn's parents, on a page named 'A New Heart For Charlie', Tracie Wright, the mother of Charlie thanks the donor and the family to give Charlie, "a second chance at life."
"They've given my baby a second chance at life and for that, I'll be forever grateful," she said.
Although the surgery is a success and Charlie will recover soon, like other babies who had a heart transplant, this British infant will have to depend on medication for rest of his life. The medication is required because sometimes rejection of the new organ occurs later.
According to BBC, Dr Zdenka Reinhardt, the cardiologist at Freeman Hospital said that Charlie was "extremely lucky considering his condition and his size."
