A teenage girl who had a successful heart transplant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) features in a prime-time documentary being shown on BBC One tonight (Tuesday 4 October).

Zoe Croft, aged 16, is one of three organ recipients whose progress is followed in "Transplant", a one-off programme looking at the complex process of organ donation.

The documentary follows the specialist teams on call 24 hours a day to perform retrieval operations – from the moment a potential donor is declared brain stem dead and consent is obtained from the family for organ donation to proceed, through to the organ retrieval and transplant surgeries, and finally onto the recovery of the patients who've benefited from the donor's organs.

Zoe, who has just started a two-year college course and is looking forward to her 17^th birthday on Saturday, said: “It is really sad, because another family have lost someone. But I am so grateful to have been given this chance. I can’t say how grateful I am.”

The organ donor featured is 65-year-old Penny who, following a severe brain haemorrhage, was admitted to St George’s Hospital in London but later sadly died. She had made it clear to her family during her lifetime that she wished to donate her organs after her death.  After being approached in hospital by a specialist nurse to discuss donation, her family agreed to support her wishes.

The first recipient, Alex, aged 52, faces a double transplant at King’s, with one of the donated kidneys and the liver.  King’s surgeons Mansoor Madanur and Andreas Prachalias perform the retrieval and transplant surgeries respectively.

At Hammersmith Hospital, patient Michael, 66, was having dialysis three times a week and had been on the waiting list for a kidney transplant for many years. Thanks to the donor, Penny, he received a kidney and was able to have his much needed transplant, performed by Consultant Transplant Surgeon Vassilios Papalois.

The final recipient, at QEHB, is Zoe, who was able to have a heart transplant performed by Cardiothoracic Surgeon Professor Robert Bonser.

Zoe, from Shropshire, desperately needed a heart transplant after being rushed into the Intensive Care Unit having been diagnosed with fluid on her heart. Further tests revealed that it was grossly enlarged and rapidly deteriorating. Within 24 hours of Zoe being prioritised on the super urgent transplant list, her family were informed that a suitable heart had become available.

Speaking in the documentary, Professor Bonser says he feels that people avoid talking about the organ donation issue during their lifetime: “I believe that people remain reluctant to reflect upon what might happen to them if they’re dead, and therefore there is a reluctance to discuss whether you could donate at that time.”

Statistics show that 40 per cent of families, when faced with the decision to donate their loved one’s organs, decline, even though they may agree in principle with organ donation.

Transplant: BBC One, 22:35, 4 October 2011