With the help of meticulous doctors and an auspicious tortoise, parents of a baby boy born with his heart on his belly button have been given renewed hope for his survival.

Doctors in Chongqing's Xinqiao Hospital on Friday performed a three-hour operation on six-month-old Liu Xin, moving his heart to its correct place inside the chest cavity.

"When the surgery started, I felt it was me on the operating table," said 39-year-old mother Chen Shiying, from Tongnan County in Chongqing Municipality.

The baby boy was hospitalized shortly after he was born on February 1, with a rare heart positioning abnormality that affects less than 7 in a million people worldwide. The cause of the condition is not known, by the mortality rate is higher than 60 percent, experts said.

"The heart was very far away from the normal place," said Xiao Yingbin, an expert in cardiovascular diseases with the hospital.

On four occasions in the past six months the boy has been on the brink of death as his heart appeared to stop beating. Any pressure on the heart could have been fatal.

Doctors warned if he was not operated on within a year he could die.

"We didn't give up because he was fighting so hard to live," said father Liu Xiaobing, also 39.

Because of his young age and the severity of the disease, the surgery was even more difficult than separating conjoined twins, according to doctors.

The hospital organized approximately 100 medical experts to conduct 16 rounds of consultation in the lead-up to the surgery.

To cheer up Liu Xin, his mother raised a tortoise in his son's ward. A tortoise represents longevity and health in Chinese mythology.

Doctors said the operation was a success, but warned it would take several months to discover whether the heart is able to recover and operate as normal.

In March, doctors in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, operated on a two-month-old baby suffering from the same disease. Sadly, the surgery failed and the baby died.

(China Daily July 29, 2006)