Teen Kept Alive for Three Months on an Artificial Heart

It's a medical first for a hospital in South Florida.

You could call her a walking miracle. Fourteen year old D'Zhana Simmons is believed to be the first pediatric patient to survive without a heart. She was kept alive by what her doctors call a custom made artificial heart.

"I feel better, I feel stronger and I can walk," said patient D'Zhana Simmons.

"It was scary because you never knew if something was going to go wrong. But I am so thankful for the doctors, my buddies and all that they've done for her," her mother, Twolla Anderson, said.

Last June, the teen from South Carolina came to Jackson Memorial's Holtz Children's Hospital with a condition called Dilated Cardiomyopathy, it caused her heart to become so weak it could not pump blood efficiently.

In July she received a heart transplant but doctors had to remove it a few days later. That's when doctors implanted a custom made total artificial heart that kept her alive for 118 days.

The machine replaced the right ventricle and the first pump was put here and the left ventricle was replaced by the second pump and kept the circulation going and the blood pumped," said Dr. Marco Ricci, Director of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery.

But before she could receive her second heart transplant, D'Zhanna went into renal failure and had to be put into a respirator. Finally, she turned the corner and was strong enough for a second heart transplant and a kidney transplant.

Now getting stronger every day, she breaks down as she thanks the doctors who saved her life.

"Thank you for helping me," D'Zhanna said.

D'Zhanna and her mother will stay at the Ronald Mcdonald house for two months so she can be closely monitored. Meantime her father and her five brothers and sisters will move to Miami so she can be close to her doctors. D'Zhanna is looking forward to the future, she plans on celebrating her fifteenth birthday this Saturday by going on a boat ride.