A teenage girl has become the first person in the UK to have a dissolvable implant fitted to close a hole in her heart that is around the size of a 10p piece.
Lillie Yale, from Warrington, faced having a permanent metal device, which would have hindered her dream of becoming a professional rugby player.
However, the biodegradable implant will act as a scaffold for Lillie’s heart to heal itself over the coming months and years, before fully dissolving and leaving behind no trace.
The procedure was performed on the 14-year-old by surgeons at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool in June.
It is the first time the device, known as Memosorb, has been used on a patient with an atrial septal defect (ASD) – a hole in the wall that divides the heart’s two upper chambers. It is made of a material commonly used in dissolvable stitches.
Lillie’s mother Becci Nichols, 38, said her daughter is “healing perfectly” and has since run a 5k, visited a theme park and returned to playing rugby.
Dr Salim Jivanji, consultant paediatric cardiologist, said the device looks “very similar” to a normal one already on the market.
He added that, with a traditional metal device, tissue would start lining the implant, while this device acts as a “scaffold”.
“The body reacts to the structure of the device,” Jivanji said.
He added: “It slowly covers it with the lining of the heart, and the polymer starts getting dissolved into carbon dioxide and water within the tissue and slowly disappears completely.
“Anywhere between six and 24 months the only thing you’ll see is what looks like a normal septum with no hole in it.”