By SYDNEY LUPKIN | Good Morning America
August 26, 2013
Sarah Murnaghan is expected to go home this week after undergoing two double lung transplants in June, a family spokeswoman told ABCNews.com.
Sarah, who's battling cystic fibrosis, has been living at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia since February. She was able to undergo the transplants because her parents successfully fought a rule that prevented her from qualifying for adult lungs.
"Things are going well here," Sarah's mother, Janet Murnaghan, wrote on her Facebook page on Saturday. "Sarah is working all day at physical rehab, it's exhausting but we are making great progress."
For the first time in two and a half years, Sarah no longer needs supplemental oxygen, but she still uses a machine to help her breathe, according to family spokeswoman Tracy Simon. She can walk with a walker and is focused on rebuilding the muscles that weakened during the time she was immobile before and after surgery.
Sarah's lung x-rays are the "best of her life," Simon said. She has completely overcome thepneumonia she caught in one of her new lungs in July.
Janet Murnaghan started a Change.org petition around Memorial Day, calling attention to what would become known as the Under 12 Rule, which said that even though Sarah would be given priority when pediatric lungs became available, adult lungs would have to be offered to adult matches in her region before they could be offered to her.
On June 5, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from enforcing the rule for Sarah. By June 10, the Organ Transplantation and Procurement Network re-evaluated the Under 12 Rule and decided to keep it but created a mechanism for exceptions, depending on the case.
Sarah received a double lung transplant on June 12, but her body rejected them. On June 15, she received a second lung transplant, and although her road to recovery has been rocky, these are the lungs she will return to her Newtown, Pa., home with as early as Tuesday.
By SYDNEY LUPKIN | Good Morning America | June 12, 2013
The 10-year-old girl whose family fought the so-called Under 12 Rule for the past several weeks will receive a lung transplant today from an adult donor, her aunt told ABC News.
Sarah Murnaghan, 10, of Newtown Square, Pa., was dying of cystic fibrosis when her family brought the Under 12 Rule, a little-known organ transplant policy, to national attention after arguing that the rule had been unfairly pushing Sarah to the bottom of the adult lung transplant waiting list. The family won a court order to put Sarah on equal footing with adults on the transplant list and prompted an Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network policy change.
"Sarah got THE CALL," her mother, Janet Murnaghan, wrote on her Facebook page. "She will be taken back to the OR in 30 minutes."
Family spokeswoman Tracy Simon told ABCNews.com that the surgery was expected to take several hours.
Sarah's lawyers convinced federal Judge Michael Baylson on June 5 that the Under 12 Rule was discriminatory, prompting a temporary restraining order against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to prevent her from enforcing it for Sarah.
Baylson's ruling forced OPTN to create a second database entry for Sarah with a fake birthday to trick the organ transplant system into thinking she was 12. The following day, another child in Sarah's hospital, Javier Acosta, 11, won the same reprieve.
The OPTN on June 10 voted to keep the so-called Under 12 Rule, but it created a mechanism that would allow doctors to request exceptions for their pediatric patients. A national lung review board would then approve these children for transplant consideration as adults case by case.
Read about the Murnaghans' battle to save Sarah.
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http://gma.yahoo.com/girl-lungs-transplant-controversy-160121103--abc-news-health.html
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Sarah Murnaghan, the 10-year-old girl who sued to be allowed an adult lung transplant, received the transplant Wednesday.
Sarah Murnaghan suffers from severe cystic fibrosis. A family spokeswoman says Sarah received new lungs from an adult donor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on Wednesday.
During double-lung transplants, surgeons must open up the patient's chest. Complications can include rejection of the new lungs and infection.
Sarah's family and the family of another cystic fibrosis patient at the hospital challenged transplant policy that made children under 12 wait for pediatric lungs to become available. They said pediatric lungs are rarely donated.
Sarah's health was deteriorating when a judge intervened in her case last week, giving her a chance at the much larger list of organs from adult donors.
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