Child heart transplants: Record year for new-style operations By Anna Collinson & Rachael Buchanan Health correspondent and medical producer Published media captionFourteen-year-old Freya Heddington was one of the first recipients - and says she's "ecstatic" Two UK hospitals have teamed up to offer a novel type of heart-transplant service for children, reducing waiting times for the life-saving operations. In the programme, so-called "non-beating donor hearts" are revived to give to teenage recipients. Freya Heddington, 14, from Bristol, was one of the first to get one, waiting just two months instead of two years. Despite the pandemic, 2020 was one of the busiest years in a decade for heart transplants in children in the UK.