Fewer than 10 children received a heart-lung transplant in the United States last year. One of them was 12-year-old Katie Grace Groebner, who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in 2008 and given a year to live.
Determined to save their daughter's life, Katie Gracie's parents sold their house in Minnesota and most of their belongings and moved to the Bay Area so she could be treated by Jeffrey Feinstein, MD, director of the Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford.
As reported in the NBC Bay Area segment above, the Groebners understandably call Katie's doctors and nurses "heroes," but Feinstein says it's the other way around. "You want to find a hero? Talk about the parents," he says in the video. "If you look at the amount of work that I did, compared to amount of work Katie Grace's parents did? There's no comparison."
Previously: Living long term with transplanted organs: One patient’s story, Stanford study in transplant patients could lead to better treatment, Anatomy of a pediatric heart transplant and ‘Genome transplant’ concept helps Stanford scientists predict organ rejection
