Children’s Hospital Colorado Performs First Combined Heart‑Liver Transplant; Child Is 37th In U.S.

Eleven-Year-Old Survives Rare Combined heart And liver transplant At children‘s Hospital Colorado

USA: An 11-year-old girl who spent six months living at a hospital has returned home after undergoing an extraordinary combined heart and liver transplant, a procedure so uncommon she is only the 37th child in U.S. history to receive both organs in the same operation. The case was handled at children’s Hospital Colorado and marked the institution’s first-ever combined heart‑liver transplantation, a milestone for the pediatric surgical team.

Born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, the child faced multiple open heart surgeries early in life that eventually led to liver failure. Her care team concluded that a heart transplant alone would not be sufficient, and she was placed on the combined heart and liver waiting list. Less than a month after listing, clinicians received a compatible donor match, and a large multidisciplinary team mobilized for the complex intervention.

The operation unfolded as a marathon in the operating room, lasting many hours and involving more than 100 staff members. Surgeons transplanted the new heart while a machine maintained circulation through the newly procured liver until the liver could be implanted, enabling both organs to be placed successfully in a coordinated sequence. Dr. Danya Brigham was one of the physicians involved in planning and executing the procedure; team members emphasized the surgical and critical‑care coordination required for such an uncommon transplantation.

The family expressed profound gratitude to the donor’s relatives, who chose to help others in the midst of their own loss, and clinicians noted the child would not have survived without that lifesaving gift. Now recovering at home, she has resumed normal childhood activities such as roller skating, dodgeball, and sleepovers, and she encourages other families facing long waits and heavy medical burdens to keep persevering. Medical staff highlighted the case as an example of how advances in pediatric transplant medicine are expanding possibilities for complex congenital disease.

Video originally published on 2026-02-25 17:23:49