US girl heads to surgery for lung transplant

A 10-year-old American girl whose dire need for a lung transplant catapulted her into the political spotlight has learned a donated lung has been found and is going into surgery, her mother said Wednesday.

"God is great! He moved the mountain! Sarah got THE CALL," wrote Janet Ruddock Murnaghan on her Facebook page.

The Pennsylvania girl, who is critically ill with cystic fibrosis, was entering surgery early Friday, her mother said.

The case drew international attention when the child's family pleaded with the US government to bend the rules and allow her to be put on the list for an adult lung transplant.

She was at the top of a waiting list for children under 12, but pediatric donor lungs are far rarer than those from adults, and experts had given Sarah only a few weeks to live if doctors did not perform a transplant.

It was unclear whether the donated organs, which arrived late Tuesday, came from an adult or a child.

"Please pray for Sarah's donor, her HERO, who has given her the gift of life. Today their family has experienced a tremendous loss, may God grant them a peace that surpasses understanding," her mother wrote.

"Today is the start of Sarah's new beginning and new life!"

Earlier this month, a US judge ordered that the child should be placed on an adult waiting list, after Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius declined to intervene.

While the health secretary said she "can't imagine anything more agonizing" than the Monaghan ordeal, she declined to suspend the rules established by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, citing medical rules and fairness to other patients.

The rules "reviewed on a regular basis are there because the worst of all worlds, in my mind, is to have some individual pick and choose who lives and who dies," Sebelius said.

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