Heart present for teenager

Press, 26 December 1987, Page 1

Heart present for teenager

By

SUE LANCASTER

Phillip Robinson was in the midst of opening his Christmas presents at Green Lane Hospital yesterday when doctors arrived with the news that a donor heart had been found for him.

By 5.35 p.m. the Christchurch teenager had received the Christmas present he desperately wanted by becoming the second person to have a heart transplant in New Zealand. “He just didn’t believe the doctors when they first came in to tell him,” said Phillip’s uncle in Christchurch, Mr Allan Gardiner. “He thought they were having him on.” A spokesman for the hospital’s heart transplant team said last evening that Phillip, aged 13, was stable. Only three weeks ago Phillip said: “I wish it had been me,” when he heard the news about Brian Lindsay’s heart transplant — the first done in New Zealand. Phillip’s mother, Mrs Trish Robinson, has been staying with him in Auckland for more than five weeks while they waited for a heart. Doctors had become progressively worried in recent weeks as the boy’s condition deteriorated and no suitable donor became available. The hospital spokesman said he had asked for the news media’s co-operation in not hunting for the donor family. An undertaking had been made to the donor family that their anonymity would be protected. The heart transplant team met about 11 a.m. The retrieval team left the hospital in Auckland at noon and returned with the heart at 4 p.m.

The spokesperson said by that stage the operation on Phillip was well under way and it took a further 45 minutes to implant the new heart. The entire operation took about three hours. The donor heart had been outside a body and not beating for two hours when it was implanted in Phillip, he said. “The new heart started beating in Phillip’s body at 5.35 p.m. and was supporting his circulation. By 7 p.m. Phillip was in the recovery area and the surgeons had grins all over their faces,”

said the spokesperson. The transplant team was headed by cardiac surgeons Messrs Clive Robinson, Alan Kerr and Ken Graham — the same team which operated on Brian Lindsay. The Christmas good fortune was not limited to only Phillip. More than two hours before it was known there was a donor heart available, Phillip’s grandmother in Christchurch won an air ticket to Auckland. Mrs Flo Robinson was offered the prize in 3ZB’s “Win a Wish” competition to be used when Phillip received his heart. Mrs Robinson arrived in Auckland last evening. Mr Gardiner said the family were grateful to the donor family. It was, however, sad that while one family was celebrating, another family was completely the opposite, he said. “We’ve got to be thankful. It’s really good of people to want to do that — to help someone else to keep on living.” Without the new heart Phillip would have eventually died, said Mr Gardiner.

Less than six, months ago, Phillip had been a normal teenage boy. He was playing football one Saturday and by the Wednesday he was in hospital, said Mr Gardiner.

The virus that left Phillip’s heart muscles seriously weakened, could have struck anyone.