Gracie Greenlaw Undergoes Rare Combined heart And liver transplant At children‘s Hospital Colorado
USA: Eleven-year-old Gracie Greenlaw, born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and the recipient of multiple open-heart surgeries, has undergone a rare combined heart and liver transplant at children‘s Hospital Colorado. After the repeated cardiac operations led to liver failure, Gracie was placed on a dual-organ donor waiting list and received a match in less than a month, becoming the 37th child in U.S. history to receive this uncommon double transplantation.
The complex operation required many hours in the operating room and the coordinated effort of more than 100 hospital staff. The procedure represented children‘s Hospital Colorado’s first combined heart–liver transplant. Surgical teams first completed the heart transplant while a machine maintained blood flow through the donor liver, which was then implanted shortly after, allowing the two transplants to be performed in a carefully timed sequence.
Hospital clinicians and Gracie’s family emphasize that the transplantation would not have been possible without the donor family’s decision to allow organ procurement during an intensely difficult time. Members of the care team, including pediatric transplant specialists, worked across disciplines to manage the simultaneous demands of heart and liver replacement and the postoperative recovery that followed.
After months in the hospital recovering from multiple surgeries and the double transplantation, Gracie has returned home and is resuming childhood activities such as roller skating, dodgeball and sleepovers. She offers encouragement to other families facing long medical journeys, urging them to persist and remain hopeful. The case marks a milestone in the hospital’s pediatric transplant program and highlights the life-altering potential of coordinated multi-organ transplantation.
Video originally published on 2026-02-25 13:45:41
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