Artificial heart baby beats the odds

A 13-MONTH-OLD boy left hospital yesterday just five months after his mother agreed with doctors that he was too ill to survive a heart condition and that his life support machine should be switched off.

Jack Vellam’s survival story broke records after he became the youngest patient to stay on an artificial heart for 120 days while he recovered from myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

Jack’s mother Danielle Hastings, 18, from Northamptonshire in England, said he suddenly fell ill in March.