A 4-year-old girl was discharged from Texas Children's Hospital on Thursday after waiting on the organ transplant waiting list for 1,025 days, or nearly 3 years.
In Arctura's case, her heart's tricuspid valve didn't form as it should, causing issues with blood flow through the heart. Her heart was also dilated, causing it to be enlarged and impacting her lungs. Arctura was born April 1, 2020, in Tennessee, but after a couple of days, she was flown to Texas Children's for further treatment, and she spent the first seven months of her life in the hospital. She received surgery to try to repair her heart and was able to be discharged in time for her first Christmas at home.
According to Dreyer, looking for a new heart for Arctura was complicated by the fact that she had developed HLA sensitization, where high levels of a certain antibody can lead to organ rejection. "I think her prognosis is good," Dreyer said. "She will need to recover, of course, from her surgery and adapt a bit to the medicines that she's taking, which will diminish over the course of time, but at three months after transplant, I would expect her to be fully operational, if you will."