Katie Mitchell had procedure at 15 after being diagnosed with Eisenmenger syndrome, a rare congenital disease
At the age of 15, medics feared Katie Mitchell was coming to the end of her life after suffering irreversible lung damage and heart failure from a rare congenital disease.
But she defied the odds thanks to a heart and lung transplant, and at the age of 53 she has become the UK’s longest-surviving recipient of such a procedure.
Mitchell was diagnosed with Eisenmenger syndrome when she was 11. She had high blood pressure in her pulmonary arteries which caused an increased resistance to blood flow through the lungs, which led to irreversible lung damage and heart failure.
Mitchell had her combined transplant at Royal Papworth hospital in September 1987, a procedure so rare that only about five are carried out in the UK each year.
