50 Years Of UAB Transplant: Former Teen Heart Patient Thankful For New Life

By Adam Pope

At just 18 years old, Megan Gagliardi was told she might die from a rare genetic heart condition. Now, thanks in part to UAB Medicine’s Comprehensive Transplant Institute (CTI), she is celebrating her recent engagement and an important six-year anniversary – all as the University of Alabama at Birmingham celebrates 50 years of transplant success.

Gagliardi and her family moved from Memphis, Tennessee, to Birmingham in 2010 during her senior year of high school. She says it was difficult to move to a school where she knew no one, and when she started experiencing health issues, she ignored them because she was focused on making it through the school year.

“I noticed I wasn’t feeling like myself,” Gagliardi said. “I would go to bed at night, and it just felt like there was a pressure in my chest. I had this constant cough that never went away; but it was the end of the school year, so I just tried to push through. After graduation, I told my mom how ill I felt. My mom decided she wanted to take me to the hospital, so they ran a whole bunch of scans, tests and panels. They noticed there was a ton of fluid in my chest.” Gagliardi says UAB’s Emergency Medicine care team wasn’t sure what was causing the fluid buildup, so they gave her a diuretic.

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