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Baylor Hospital Live Tweets Heart Transplant

A North Texas woman got a new heart Monday and the entire procedure was covered live on Twitter.

The surgery took place at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas and the hospital said it was believed to be the first time a heart transplant was covered live on social media.

The patient, whose real name will not be released, agreed to the live social media access to her surgery. Identified only as "Jane," she is from North Texas and is in her 30s. She is married and has one teenage child.

According to hospital officials, Jane has been living with cardiomyopathy since she was a baby. In the past year, her heart condition deteriorated to the point where doctors determined she needed a transplant.

She was put on the transplant waiting list earlier this month and received the call that a matching donor was found on Monday morning.

Jane’s surgery went as planned, and, according to @BaylorHealth’s tweets, she was resting Monday evening in the intensive care unit.

According to a statement from Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas:

The surgeon performing today’s transplant is Juan MacHannaford, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor Dallas. Also in the operating room to help us tell Jane’s story will be Gonzalo V. Gonzalez-Stawinski, MD, chief of heart transplantation for Baylor Scott & White, and Brian Lima, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor Dallas.

The doctors are members of the second largest heart transplant program by volume in the country — and first in Texas — with survival rates that exceed the national average.

In 2011, NBC 5's Deborah Ferguson was the first television reporter to live-tweet during a kidney transplant when NBC 5 anchor Kristi Nelson donated an organ to her mother.

Deborah was with Kristi as doctors removed her kidney laparoscopically, then followed surgeons to a nearby operating room where they implanted the healthy kidney into her mother, Helen.

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