Newsroom South East report with Stephen Westaby

The device, known as the Berlin Heart, had to be flown in by jet from Germany after the youngster failed to respond to drug therapy.

It was implanted just two hours before the boy was going to die. His heart was expanding and was three times its normal size.

Surgeon Stephen Westaby conducted the pioneering operation on the boy, from Reading, at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Mr Westaby said: "When we knew we had the 10-year-old boy in trouble and there was no other alternative, in fact he was going to die within in a few hours, I rang my colleague - the professor in Berlin - and asked him whether he would send the Berlin Heart across by Lear jet to Oxford.

"He was very kind enough to do that, and send five personnel with it."

Failing heart

"The device is a pump. There are two and just like the normal heart we used one for each side of the heart. We opened the little boy's chest and connected the tubes to the relative chambers of the heart and then allowed this type of device to take over from his own failing heart.

"We kept him alive with that for five days while we liaised with the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street in an attempt to get a heart donor.

"I am very pleased to say the little boy did very well indeed on the artificial heart and we managed to get a donor on Sunday morning."

Mr Westaby said he believed it was the first time the device had been used outside Berlin, where doctors have used it to treat virus infection of the heart muscle in children without the need for a transplant.

Mr Westaby said: "Initially we hoped the young lad's own heart would recover but having put the pump in and obtained a biopsy it was clear that it wouldn't and we had to go ahead and arrange a transplant."

Domino transplant

The Jarvic 2000 being developed by Mr Westaby

The 10-year-old received a heart from a teenager with cystic fibrosis, who in turn needed a heart and lung transplant. The double operation is known as a 'domino transplant'.

Two days after surgery the youngster was sitting up and chatting with his family.

The Berlin Heart works as an external pumping mechanism that helps circulate blood from the heart to the lungs.