Woman, 53, becomes UK’s longest survivor of heart and lung transplant

Katie Mitchell said her donor and surgeons at Papworth hospital had given her ‘the gift of a normal life’. Photograph: NHSBT/PA

At the age of 15, Katie Mitchell was told by medics that she was nearing 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.