Half-a-heart girl Millie's life-saving miracle op

Once too weak to move... now she is full of energy

- MARTIN BAGOT

SURGEONS have saved the life of a girl born with only one lung and half a working heart.

Millie Healey, 12, had one of the most complex procedures ever performed.

It involved linking veins directly to her working lung, leaving the single heart ventricle to circulate blood.

Mum Kerry said of the London op: "It was a miracle.

"When Millie went in she was too weak to walk to the end of the bed.

"When she came out she'd walked all the way from the hospital on the South Bank and over Westminster Bridge Big Ben to Millie's rare combination of defects led to three open-heart ops before she was one.

But last year her condition began to worsen again.