3-year-old Morgan Porter thriving after receiving a heart transplant.
/ FILE
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- A 3-year-old girl is doing well following a rare heart transplant at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
A Charleston newspaper reports Morgan Porter of Lady's Island received the new heart in a six-hour operation that ended early Wednesday. She had needed the transplant since August and had been kept alive with a mechanical heart.
The girl received the new heart from the family of a child who had a head injury.
Heart transplants for patients so young are rare. Since 1988, about 460 heart transplants have been performed at the medical university. But only 27 of them have been children younger than five.
Morgan became ill last summer and doctors said her heart wasn't working properly.
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