Surgeons: At the Edge of Life

The series also features pioneering surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital, including an extraordinary 12-hour operation to create a functioning connection from a three-year-old girl's heart to her lungs, for the first time in her life. Few surgical teams in the world have as much experience in her rare condition as BCH.

At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, England, around 700 operations are carried out every week, across 42 specialist theatres. Most patients have conditions that are familiar to experienced surgeons, but occasionally the teams must tackle much rarer and more challenging cases.

This episode explores how surgeons within England's National Health Service endeavour to meet the needs of patients who require surgery to improve their very poor quality of life. The challenge is balancing the risk posed by highly invasive procedures, against the potential long-term benefit of treating incapacitating conditions which have left their patients housebound and in need of care.

To correct Madison's unusual anatomy, David must carry out an intricate 12-hour operation to reconstruct the blood supply between her heart and lungs. This is a rarely performed, multi-stage procedure that requires extraordinary stamina and skill on the part of the surgical team, and during which Madison's heart will be stopped altogether.

When 44-year-old AnnMarie was just a toddler, she accidentally drank bleach, which caused severe damage. She has been struggling to cope with her badly scarred oesophagus ever since. Annmarie has trouble swallowing and visits hospital several times a year to have her oesophagus stretched. It's a highly uncomfortable procedure in which a balloon is inserted into the oesophagus and inflated.

The second season of the ground-breaking series concludes with an episode focused on the work of surgeons in the fast-paced field of trauma surgery. With access to the Emergency Department and Trauma Theatres of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, the episode features some of the UK's top surgeons battling to make the difference between life and death for critically injured patients.