Lifesaving surgery for girl, 5, gives 2nd chance

A 5-year-old girl named Xiaoni, who underwent two high-risk cardiac surgeries over 110 days, was discharged from hospital earlier this month after making a full recovery.

Weighing only 12.2 kilograms and diagnosed with restrictive cardiomyopathy — a rare heart muscle disease accounting for as little as 2 percent of cardiomyopathy diagnoses — the young patient from Jiangsu province was once teetering on the brink of death.