A baby was ‘frozen to death’ for more than 20 minutes in pioneering surgery to fix a life-threatening heart defect.
Samaa Zohir, who was born with blood vessels to her heart connected the wrong
way round, was chilled to the point of death before medics stopped her heart to correct the otherwise fatal condition.
Preparing to work on her tiny heart – smaller than a golf ball – the surgical team at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, put the month-old baby into suspended animation to have enough time for the delicate operation.
They placed bags of ice around her head and cooled her blood from the normal 37C to 18C using a heart-lung bypass machine. As her core temper
