The parents of a teenage girl who needs a heart transplant say her health is deteriorating fast.

From a disco-dancing, fun-loving 17-year-old at Christmas, Vicky Hutchinson has developed the breathlessness of a pensioner and needs a wheelchair to get about.

She suffers Dilated Cardio Myopathy - caught from a virus - and is being treated at Leeds Infirmary.

The news has come as a double blow for her parents, whose only son Adrian died from a heart defect at just ten months.

Father Gary, who runs The Girlington pub in Thornton Road, said: "She is deteriorating fast. I would say she has gone down between 60 and 70 per cent in just a month.

"She didn't eat for 11 days and had to be fed through her nose. She is just like a bag of bones and weighs only seven and a half stone.

"Not eating is putting even more pressure on her heart. I found it hard to eat myself after seeing her like that."

He added: "The strain is beginning to tell. She's down in the dumps and has lost her jollity. She just looks through you when you talk to her and has retreated into a shell.

"The furthest she can get about on her own is from the bed to the toilet. But we're hoping that, if all goes well and she can get a donor, she will live a normal life.

"Apparently the operation is straightforward but the after- effects can cause problems. She went for further blood and tissue tests at a hospital in Sheffield and will be going back to Leeds until they find a suitable donor.

"She can come home once she can tolerate food again, but with a bleeper. All the doctors and staff at Leeds have been brilliant."

Dr Lipbun Tan, the consultant treating Vicky, said: "In this condition the heart is bigger than usual and there is muscle disease. There are many causes. Some are born with it."

Gary, 40, and wife Janet, 36, feared their two other daughters, Angela, 19, and Helen, 15, might have hereditary heart conditions. But Gary said: "The doctors don't think it is hereditary. It's just unfortunate this happened to two of our children."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.