HEART transplant patients will light candles symbolising their new life at a ceremony celebrating a decade of operations at a North West hospital.

Five recipients from East Lancashire are expected to join up to 200 heart and lung transplant patients at Manchester Cathedral on Sunday for the event marking the success of surgeons at Wythenshawe Hospital.

Lisa Beavan, of Rossendale, is the most recent transplant patient in the area. She received her replacement heart in March 95.

Others are Frank Bradshaw of Blackburn, July 1994; Vincent Hodkinson of Accrington, September 1990; Joyce Mansfield of Colne, November 1988 and Pauline Ratcliffe Burnley, December 1994.

Prayers at the service at 2pm on Sunday will be led by the hospital's youngest transplant recipient, Kelly Walmsley, 17, of Westhoughton, Bolton, and the Rev Ronnie Clark, the former Church of England chaplain to Wythenshawe Hospital.

Surgeons at Wythenshawe carried out their first transplant in April 1987 and became designated as one of the country's major transplant centres in December 1989.

Over the decade, the Wythenshawe team has carried out more than 360 heart, heart-lung and single transplant operations with a success rate equal to the best in the world.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.