Boy with 'one in a million' condition becomes first child in UK to undergo life-saving heart failure procedure
Elliot Atkins’s parents were told that their son would be unlikely to survive without action, after he was diagnosed with heart failure
A schoolboy with a "one in a million" condition has had his life saved after becoming the first child in the UK to have a rare form of heart surgery.
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Elliot Atkins was 11-months-old when he was diagnosed with a condition called middle aortic syndrome and received an angioplasty, a procedure usually reserved for adults.
His parents were told that without action, he would be unlikely to survive after he was diagnosed with heart failure and the "one in a million" condition.
But medics at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) said the angioplasty reversed Elliot’s heart failure – a condition previously considered irreversible – making it possible for him to receive a vital operation last July.
There are also no other documented cases, meaning he could be the first child ever to be given the intervention for heart failure.
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Elliot, seven, who lives with his parents and sister Miya, nine, in Colchester, Essex, is now "running around with his friends and happy" and training for his school sports day, his mother Amy Govier said.
Ms Govier and Elliot's father, Thomas Atkins, both 29, realised something was wrong when Elliot was a toddler, when he became seriously unwell following a chest infection.
After developing a chest infection four weeks before his first birthday, he was struggling to breathe, and a scan revealed his heart was enlarged.
He was taken to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, where further tests concluded Elliot was in heart failure, that his blood pressure was dangerously high, and the aorta – the large tube that connects the heart to the rest of the body – was narrowed.
Elliot was then referred to GOSH, where he was also diagnosed with middle aortic syndrome, which leads to the aorta, the body’s main blood vessel, and vessels bringing blood to the kidneys becoming severely narrowed.
With such advanced heart failure, major surgery was initially considered too risky for Elliot until his medical team decided to try a never-before-performed intervention in children with heart failure.
Doctors from different specialities across the world-renowned children’s hospital discussed giving Elliot an angioplasty to widen his blood vessels and improve his blood pressure control, helping his heart grow strong enough to eventually have surgery.
While angioplasty is a routine treatment in adults, it has not traditionally been considered possible for children with severe heart failure.
Mr Atkins, a military medic, said that because the procedure had not been performed in a child with heart failure before, there was nothing they could look at and read.
A series of angioplasty procedures – six by the age of two – helped Elliot become strong enough to withstand a long and complex operation – an aortic bypass graft with a transplant of a single kidney.
Ms Govier said: "All of the angioplasties led up to a big surgery that he had July last year, which he wouldn’t have made it to without the angioplasties, and now he’s running around happy, can keep up with his friends.
"He just knows he’s got this scar on his tummy, and that’s it. He is very excited for sports day – they do a class race, which he’s very excited for, and there’s some ball skills, and there’s some throwing that he’s just really excited for all of it.
"He’s just a bundle of joy. He always tries to make people laugh."
Since Elliot’s first angioplasty in 2020, the teams at Gosh have gone on to perform angioplasty procedures for other children with heart failure.
Dr Jelena Stojanovic, Elliot’s clinician and lead for the kidney transplant and renovascular service, said: "Following Elliot’s intervention, we have successfully performed this intervention over several other children who will refer to us not from other centres in the UK but also from abroad.
"This is a very rare condition, and the numbers on its own will be small, but what is important is that the children can be offered the chance to survive.
"When we as a team look at him today, we see a child who has been given an opportunity that simply would have not existed without the treatment and the extraordinary efforts of the teams involved in his care.