UCLA doctors push medical boundaries to offer patient chance at life
Newswise — At age 32, Brandie Osborne has beaten the odds.
The young woman from Compton has dealt with health issues her entire life and faced death more than once. But now, with a new donated heart and kidney transplanted at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, she has been given a second chance to live and she is ready to take on the world.
Brandie was born with a fairly common genetic condition called Noonan’s Syndrome which can be associated with heart and lung problems. In Brandie’s case, she developed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the heart muscle, and pulmonary hypertension which caused high blood pressure in her lungs. In 2009, her condition eventually worsened and she was placed on the wait list for a heart/lung transplant at hospital in northern California that was covered by her insurance.
While waiting, she suffered heart and lung failure which required a breathing tube. Then, her kidneys failed and she needed dialysis. With so many medical complications, she was deemed an unacceptable candidate for transplantation and transferred back to UCLA to pursue “end of life” care.
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