Great Ormond Street

In the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, doctors strive to save the lives of three children with life-threatening congenital diseases.

Great Ormond Street Hospital is the last chance for children in the UK whose lungs are failing because of cystic fibrosis and other conditions. In a few very severe cases each year, their only hope of survival is to undergo a radical and risky step - a double lung transplant. With extraordinary access to the medical teams and the families involved for a year, this programme follows the perilous but potentially life-changing process of giving a child new lungs and a new life. Doctors only decide to list a child for transplant when they have less than two years to live with their own lungs. But new lungs - which can be rejected by the body - have a limited life span. Neither doctors nor families can know how long they will last. Children then have to live with the uncertainty of waiting for a matching donor lung to become available. As many as 25 per cent die while they are still waiting. For some lung transplant children, it is only after new lungs have arrived, that the greatest challenges begin. Charlie is nine years old and has cystic fibrosis. For most of his life he has managed to cope but in recent months his condition has rapidly deteriorated. Doctors and his family - and Charlie himself - will need to make a decision quickly. Jess is 14, and was told she should be listed for a lung transplant two years ago. But she was too scared. She made her own decision to take a risk and delay the operation. But has she left it too late? Chloe is 11 and has already been waiting for new lungs for nearly a year. Louie is a few days short of his second birthday. Doctors are considering making him the youngest patient ever to have a lung transplant at Great Ormond Street.

Great Ormond Street is Britain's leading hospital for treating children with serious diseases of the brain - from tumours to epilepsy to rare neurovascular conditions. To save lives, doctors have no option but to undertake treatments which carry grave risks - children may be left with a mental impairment or may not even survive. Trinity is seven years old and has just been diagnosed with a rare tumour in a critical part of her brain. The tumour rests on her brain stem, which controls vital functions. Her parents must decide whether to go ahead with surgery and controversial proton beam therapy. Jack is 16 and suffers from severe epileptic seizures which cannot be controlled through medication. Great Ormond Street's epilepsy team can offer radical brain surgery which could cure him but carries serious risks. For Jack and his family it's a tough choice. Great Ormond Street is a world-leading centre for treating a rare condition affecting the blood vessels of the brain, known as a Vein of Galen malformation. We follow Dr Adam Rennie, a consultant interventional radiologist, as he takes on the treatment of two very young children - Cody is 18 months old and Ella Mae is a newborn baby. The condition is almost always fatal if untreated but the only possible cure is risky. Using a narrow tube fed up into the brain from an artery in the leg, blood vessels must be blocked off using tiny metal coils or glue. Dr Rennie is one of only three doctors in the country capable of carrying out the procedure. One third of his patients will not survive the operation, one third will suffer a minor bleed in the brain, one third will be cured.