Adam Newman is living up to his surname after innovative surgeons adapted a "flatpack" operating technique to plug a large hole in his heart.

The 14-year-old punctured the partition between his heart's two pumping chambers when he fell on to the handlebars of his bicycle.

Normally Adam, from Walsall, west Midlands, would have needed open heart surgery to stitch the threequarters of an inch wound, followed by intensive care in hospital and a long recovery.

But once the swelling round the injury had reduced sufficiently, three weeks after the accident last August, Adam needed just a 90-minute operation at the children's hospital in Birmingham and was home the next day.

The procedure involved inserting a one-inch "flatpacked" device, fed through a catheter tube in Adam's neck.

Once in place, the "flatpack" was opened up to fill the hole.

The technique is more usually used in adults who develop a hole in their heart after a heart attack, although it has been used to repair congential defects in children, too.

Paul Miller, a paediatric cardiologist, said: "We were able to rectify Adam's heart with out the need for open heart surgery, which has considerable benefits in that it is a much less invasive procedure."

Cherie Newman, Adam's mother, said: "We have to go back to the hospital for check-ups every three months, but Adam is as active now as he was before the accident."