A baby less than one day old has become the youngest person ever to have open heart surgery.
Jasmine Carr had only a 15 per cent chance of survival when surgeons operated on her just 17-and-a-half hours after she was born.
The child is now out of intensive care at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital and parents Jo and James hope she will be back at home by April.
The couple first discovered Jasmine had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, where one side of the heart fails to form properly, when Mrs Carr had her 20-week scan.
Doctors had to induce the mother of two at just 37 weeks, and Jasmine was born weighing 5lb 13oz, with a heart the size of a walnut, according to the Daily Mirror.
As she was rushed off for emergency surgery, her terrified parents could only sit and wait.
'Being told there is little chance of your daughter living is the most heartbreaking thing you can hear as a mother,' said Mrs Carr, 27, a hospital cook.
'Waiting for the surgeons to complete the operation was the most distressing few hours of my life.'
Dr Asif Hasan re-plumbed the heart and trained the right side to do the work of the left in an 11-hour operation.
But Jasmine suffered a cardiac arrest the following day, and had to spend almost three months in intensive care.
She was finally transferred to the high dependency ward just before Christmas last year and doctors are now confident of a full recovery.
Last Monday she had another operation to widen an artery and her parents hope to take her home to Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, in the next few months.
Driver James, 29, who gave up his job when Jasmine was diagnosed with the condition, said: 'Being able to hold our baby is just incredible.
'Fingers crossed she’ll be home by April. And we’re planning a little homecoming party when she arrives.'
Paddy Walsh, a specialist cardiac nurse at the Newcastle hospital, said that Dr Hasan’s team was one of the best in Britain.
The previous youngest heart surgery patient was Rudy Maxwell-Jones, who was 36 hours old when he was operated on at Birmingham Children’s Hospital in July.
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