Transplant girl 'poorly but improving'

Sally underwent a seven-hour life-saving operation

The six-year-old girl who had an emergency heart transplant is "poorly but improving", hospital chiefs say.

It is more than 48 hours since Sally Slater underwent a seven-hour emergency heart transplant at The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne.

She is still unconscious in intensive care, where her parents are keeping a constant vigil.

Sally was fitted with a plastic heart

She had been given just hours to live before the donor heart was found.

Doctors revealed on Monday how Sally, from Malham, North Yorkshire, was given a plastic heart to keep her alive while a national appeal was launched to find a donor heart.

The £40,000 device, which is an artificial plastic pumping chamber which mimics the two chambers of the heart, had only been previously used on a handful of patients in the UK.

Perfect health

Sally, who had been in perfect health until a few weeks ago, was suffering from cardiomyopathy, which affects the muscles in the heart, as result of the virus.

Consultant paediatrician Leslie Hamilton said: "We can't be absolutely clear what happened to Sally's heart - it is one of the mysteries we'll never know. But her condition is very rare."

Sally is among Britain's youngest heart recipients.

Sally's parents are constantly at her bedside

Her parents Jon and Bridget Slater, both 36, made an appeal for a donor on Friday as time was running out for their daughter.

Mr Slater, an independent financial adviser, said: "It is impossible to tell whether the appeal actually caused the heart to become available, but it can't have done any harm, so we're grateful to people.

The heart was found on Saturday and the operation began shortly after midnight.

Sally's parents have two other children, Joe, five, and Charlie, three.

The hospital have refused to disclose the identity of the donor, saying the wishes of the child's family had to be respected.

Mr Hamilton said: "Sally has got all the usual problems that transplant patients face in the first days after their transplant. She is starting off as a very sick little girl."

Potential hazards include the possibility of infection, and rejection of the donor organ by the body.