NHS doctors use reanimated hearts to save lives of six children

The 'game-changing' technique – known as donation after circulatory death (DCD) – sees hearts being reanimated and kept beating outside a human body until they are ready for transplanting.

Anna Hadley, one of patients who have received new hearts. Picture: Family handout/PA Wire

NHS doctors in the UK have become the first in the world to give children new hearts which have been brought back to life by a ground-breaking machine.

Staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) in London and Royal Papworth Hospital (RPH) in Cambridge collaborated on the medical breakthrough, which saved the lives of six youngsters in 2020.