By Ng Wan Ching IN hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), the heart's left side - including the aorta, aortic valve, left ventricle and mitral valve - is underdeveloped. TNP GRAPHICS: TEOH YI CHIE The defect is not correctable, but some babies can be treated with a series of operations, or heart transplantation. Dr Lim Chong Hee, director of the heart-lung transplant programme at the National Heart Centre, said that such a condition is very rare. 'This condition can be picked up during antenatal screening. Many of them are aborted because they are picked up during antenatal screening. Such babies are doomed to multiple operations and they may not survive the operations,' said Dr Lim. These operations create a connection between the veins returning low-oxygen (bluish) blood to the heart and the pulmonary artery. The aim is to allow the right ventricle to pump only oxygenated blood to the body and to prevent or reduce cyanosis (lower than normal blood oxygen levels). The most famous infant with this condition was Baby Fae, who received the heart of a baboon to replace her own defective heart, at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in the United States in 1984. She died 20 days later. This article was featured in The New Paper July 2009. http://www.tnp.sg/news/story/0,4136,207854,00.html?