Question of survival (From York Press)

Question of survival

8:42am Thursday 11th October 2012 in Letters By Reader's letter

IN RESPONSE to Dr Ian Jenkins (Letters, October 8) regarding the changes to the Children’s Congenital Heart Service, can you guarantee that children born with transposition of the great arteries (TGA) who are in urgent need of a balloon septostomy will in future not be endangered by these changes?

Some cases of TGA, as you know, require this surgical procedure as soon as possible due to the ineffectiveness of prostaglandin E1, especially in cases of simple TGA.

Without this procedure, these children will continue to deteriorate and an ambulance crew would be unable to stabilise their condition.

If a child was born in these circumstances in Hull or Cleethorpes and had to wait for a team to collect them from Barnsley to take them to Newcastle or Leicester (a distance of about 200 miles), would these children survive?

Rob Oliver, Crombie Avenue, York.