A genetic mutation led her to receive a heart transplant. Dorra returns to studying law and painting

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Dora, a young woman in her twenties, did not feel any symptoms when she learned that her heart carried a genetic mutation that threatened its heart muscle. Today, a year after undergoing a heart transplant at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh, she has returned to studying law and to her paintings, which are never absent from the heart.

Her condition was discovered through genetic testing, after her sister was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, and her examination revealed a genetic mutation that causes the disease. The medical team recommended examining the rest of the family members, and it turned out that Dora carried the same mutation, and they began following her up before the disease progressed.

For his part, Dr. Ahmed Riyad Al-Mustafa, an adult heart failure consultant at the Specialized Specialist, who is supervising the case, says: “Cardiomyopathy has many causes, and one of our most important steps to find out its cause is performing a genetic test, because these disorders may appear among family members to varying degrees. The test enables us to identify those who carry the mutation even before symptoms appear, and to follow them before the disease reaches advanced stages.”

As her heart efficiency declined, Dora underwent cardiac catheterization and magnetic resonance imaging, in addition to drug treatment. When the medication was no longer sufficient, she was placed, by decision of a medical committee, on the heart transplant waiting list, and waited about five months, part of which she spent in intensive care under daily monitoring, until a suitable donor became available.

After the transplant, Dora needed an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation device, which temporarily took over part of the work of the heart and lungs, to ease the burden on the transplanted heart during its first days. After three days, her condition stabilized, the device was removed, and her body accepted the transplanted heart.

For eight hours, from noon until eight in the evening, the family waited outside the operating room, with a nurse at her side who did not leave her side from the time Dora entered the hospital until she left. When the operation was over, she said to her mother: “That’s it, I’ve handed over the trust,” while Dr. Al-Mustafa would come out to them from time to time to tell them what was going on inside.

After months of waiting, surgery, and recovery, Dorra's days returned to what they were before her illness, during which she moved between law lectures, sports, and travel, while drawing remained the most important to her. When she remembers the moment she learned of her injury, she says: “It is difficult to receive news like this and not feel anything. I thought I was living my life in the right way.”