A WORLD-CLASS Hampshire children’s heart unit providing lifesaving care to youngsters with congenital heart problems that was saved after a Daily Echo campaign has been rated as one of the top performing centres in the Britain.

The specialist unit at Southampton Children’s Hospital carries out nearly 1,000 operations a year and cares for thousands of patients from across the South of England.

Now it has been scored as one of the best performing centres in the country with some of the best survival rates for youngsters, following the publication of a major national report.

It comes in the wake of a campaign supported by the Daily Echo to save the world-leading centre from being axed as part of a nationwide shake-up of childrens’ heart services.

Figures released in the newly published National Congenital Heart Disease Audit Report showed Southampton has one of the lowest death rates, despite carrying out some of the most complex operations.

Of the 11 centres in England, Southampton was one of only four units to record a higher than expected rate of survival.

As part of the analysis, which is managed by the National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR), each hospital was assessed on how ill its patients were, how high-risk their procedures were and how many survived.

The Southampton centre, which works in partnership with Oxford Children’s Hospital in a clinical network and cares for more than 10,000 patients from across the South of England, performed 829 operations with a survival rate of 98.3 per cent against a predicted score of 97 per cent.

In total, the team carried out 1,905 congenital procedures – surgical and interventional (via catheter) – during the three-year audit period between 2012 and 2015.

Dr Kevin Roman, pictured, a consultant paediatric cardiologist and clinical lead at Southampton, said: “We are all working tirelessly to maintain the highest standards of treatment and care for our children and their families and are delighted to again be rated among the country’s best-performing centres.

“We will continue to grow and develop our service to ensure we remain at the forefront of developments in our field and provide the best possible service for children across the south of England.”

As previously reported the centre was saved from the closure in a government announcement marking a victory for the Daily Echo’s Have a Heart campaign – which rallied support from more than 250,000 people signing a petition handed in at Downing Street.

Previously the unit was given just a 25 per cent chance of survival as NHS bosses looked to cut down the UK’s 11 units to six or seven in a move to boost standards for the future.

But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt criticised the original consultation for its “flawed analysis” and ordered that a second review should take place.

Now the hospital and other centres are in a race against time to meet a set of standards set out for each unit to abide by 2021.

The new proposals could see all the units stay open, but that can only happen if all centres meet the new requirements.

They include rules that each centre carries out at least 125 operations a year and have at least four surgeons.

A spokesman for University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust said the trust already meets almost all of the standards and plans to meet them by the deadline.