EVEN when it didn't work very well, Anne Britten always had a lot of heart. She still does, but now her heart is in the right place - the left side of her chest.

The mother of two from Wee Waa in New South Wales was born with a rare defect - her heart was on the right side, a condition complicated by her other organs being out of place.

In an Australia-first operation performed on Mother's Day by the St Vincent's Hospital cardiac transplant team led by Dr Paul Jansz, Ms Britten received a donor heart fitted to her right side - that's to say, the left side.



On the transplant list for "three years, three months and six days" husband Robert says, Ms Britten, 43, had survived the past two years on her failing old heart thanks to a mechanical enhancement - the Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD).

It enabled her to remain the busy mum of Stephen, 16 and Blake, 14. When it required recharging, Ms Britten would, while driving, calmly plug its lead into the car's cigarette lighter.

"I'm feeling good," she said last week. "It hasn't really hit yet. It might when we eventually go home and walk down our main street and it takes two hours because everyone will be pulling me up talking to me.

"The boys have never known me not sick. They're going to be in for rude shock."

Hailing from Manilla, the same town as Fiona Coote, who in 1980 at the age of 14 became Australia's youngest heart-transplant recipient - Ms Britten said the prospect of leading a normal and lengthy life is a "bit like pressing the restart button".

A beaming Mr Britten said: "It's a Mother's Day present that's going to be hard to top. Breakfast in bed is just not going to cut it."



Dr Jansz said the operation was possible only to due to the sustaining effect of the LVAD. Before receiving it, Ms Britten was "down to 56kg and deteriorating rapidly".

Dr Jansz said NSW was the only state without government funding for lifesaving mechanical assist devices.