Maltese surgeon performs first-in-nation surgery saving local babies from rare heart defect

# Maltese surgeon offers hope to babies with rare condition

**St. Luke’s Hospital, Malta** – In a quiet corner of the neonatal ward, Dr. Miriam Camilleri adjusts her surgical loupes and studies the tiny heart beating on the ultrasound screen. At 43, the Paola-born paediatric cardiothoracic surgeon has just become the first Maltese physician to successfully correct a rare congenital defect known as truncus arteriosus without flying the newborn overseas. For parents who once faced the agony of separation and €100,000 air-ambulance bills, the operation marks more than a medical milestone—it is a cultural shift in how Malta protects its smallest citizens.

Truncus arteriosus affects barely one in 10,000 babies: instead of two separate arteries leaving the heart, a single vessel tries to do the job of both, flooding the lungs with blood and oxygen-starving the body. Untreated, 85 % of infants die within a year. Until this spring, every Maltese diagnosis meant an emergency transfer to Rome or London, a wrenching exile for families already reeling from shock. “My first son had to be flown out six hours after birth,” recalls Rebecca Spiteri from Żabbar, her voice still cracking 11 years later. “I saw him for ten minutes, then spent three weeks glued to my phone in Malta, praying the WhatsApp signal held.”

Camilleri’s team changed that narrative on 14 March, when 11-day-old Mattea Grech became the first patient to undergo the complex repair entirely on home soil. The six-hour procedure involved fashioning a new pulmonary artery from donated pericardial tissue, rerouting blood flow and closing a large ventricular septal defect. Mattea, now a rosy four-month-old, giggled through her follow-up last week, clutching the stethoscope that once frightened her. “We didn’t just save a life,” Camilleri says, peeling an “I love Malta” sticker off her scrub top. “We kept a family together—grandparents, cousins, the whole village lattice that makes childhood here magical.”

The operation was made possible by a €1.2 million investment in ECMO—extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—machines negotiated by Malta’s Ministry of Health after a vociferous social-media campaign led by the parents’ support group Truncus Trust Malta. Founded by Spiteri and two other mothers, the charity collected 18,000 signatures in ten days, enough to prompt a parliamentary debate last December. “We told MPs that every flight abroad was a Maltese heartbeat removed from our islands,” Spiteri explains. “Once we spoke their language—votes—they listened.”

Local pride has surged in the weeks since. Bunting in the colours of the national flag appeared in Msida windows; a festa band in Qormi dedicated its Saint George’s Day march to “Mattea’s Miracle”; and fishermen in Marsaxlokk renamed a traditional luzzu *Tal-Qalb ta’ Mattea* (“Mattea’s Heart”). Even the Archbishop weighed in, invoking the island’s centuries-old devotion to the Sacred Heart as a metaphor for collective compassion. “Malta has always punched above its weight,” Health Minister Chris Fearne told reporters outside the hospital. “From the Knights’ hospitals to our COVID response, size has never defined our courage.”

Yet the achievement also spotlights lingering gaps. ECMO remains the only machine of its kind in the country; paediatric cardiac nurses train abroad on their own annual leave; and Camilleri is still Malta’s sole surgeon qualified for neonatal bypass. “We can’t rest on one success,” cautions Dr. Kenneth Grech, head of paediatrics at Mater Dei. “Population growth means we’ll see another truncus case within 18 months. We need a second surgeon, a dedicated paediatric ICU, and a tissue-engineering lab so we’re not relying on imports.”

For now, families celebrate the possibility of staying put. In Għargħur, Mattea’s parents have commissioned a traditional *ħaġra* (limestone plaque) engraved with her footprints and the date of surgery. “We want her to grow up knowing her heart beats to a Maltese rhythm,” says father Luke Grech, bouncing his daughter while the evening church bells ring. “No passports, no foreign sirens—just the sound of home.”

Camilleri, sipping a well-earned *kinnie* after rounds, allows herself a rare moment of reflection. “Medicine is universal, but healing is local,” she says, watching the hospital windows glow amber against the limestone walls. “When a nation decides its children belong here, miracles stop being miracles—they become policy.” Somewhere on the ward, a monitor beeps steady and strong, echoing the pulse of an island learning to trust its own heart.