THE young daughter of multi-millionaire Graham Wylie will never need another major heart operation after surgeons performed a miracle procedure.
Two-year-old Kiera’s life has been saved twice by experts at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, since she was born with a devastating list of heart complications including a hole in the heart.
The medical team, headed by surgeons Massimo Grisselli and Asif Hasan, had been scheduled to carry out a third critical operation days before Christmas, yet once they began it appeared too complex and dangerous to carry out.
However, determined to ensure Kiera can grow up healthy and happy with her twin sister, Zahra, the team persevered for nine solid hours to correct the youngster’s condition.
And as little Kiera recovers at home in Jesmond, Newcastle, her relieved parents Graham and Andrea are adjusting to news that she will never have to endure surgery of such magnitude ever again.
“In fact, she may never have to have a heart operation of any kind again,” said Mr Wylie, owner of Close House Hotel and Golf in Northumberland. “She’s just like any other little girl and unless you see the scar on her chest you’d never even know she was a heart patient.”
Kiera was just two days old when she first underwent life-saving surgery, a procedure mapped out in advance after her complex condition was diagnosed when she was still in her mother’s womb.
Moments after she was born in December 2009, she was separated from twin sister Zahra and taken across Newcastle from the Royal Victoria Infirmary for treatment at the pioneering Children’s Heart Unit at the Freeman Hospital.
Five months later – luckily while she was being monitored at the Gosforth-based unit – Kiera collapsed and almost died in her mother’s arms, prompting swift action from surgeons once more.
The couple had always known that Kiera would need this latest operation, known as a Rastelli procedure, but they had to wait until she was deemed strong enough to endure it.
That day arrived on December 9, and it was the devoted parents themselves who took Kiera up to the operating theatre.
