Girl Near Death Given New Heart
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NEW YORK — A 12-year-old girl who had only hours to live received a heart transplant Monday, hours after the hospital made a desperate plea for a donor heart, a hospital official said.
Sandra Makris of Yonkers, N.Y., who was struck in September by a virus that caused deterioration in her heart muscle, was in critical but stable condition after surgery, said Gerard Dahill of Columbia-Prebyterian Medical Center.
The donor heart, from a 25-year-old man identified only as a resident of a Southern state who died of a brain vessel rupture, was just close enough for heart specialists to fly it to New York in time for the transplant, physician’s assistant Richard Gemming said.
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