DURHAM, N.C. ? A 17-year-old girl lay near death Tuesday after mistakenly receiving a heart and lung transplant from a donor with the wrong blood type, and hospital officials held out little hope of finding a new set of organs in time.

Jesica Santillan’s condition steadily deteriorated after the botched operation Feb. 7. She suffered a heart attack Feb. 10 and a seizure on Sunday, and was in critical condition with a machine keeping her heart and lungs going.

“Right now my daughter is between life and death. She could die at any moment,” her mother, Magdalena Santillan, said in Spanish through an interpreter. “My daughter needs a transplant of a heart and lungs to survive. It’s the only hope that we have because the doctors made an error.”

The girl has type O-positive blood but was given organs from a donor with type-A blood during the operation at Duke University Hospital.

Hospital spokesman Richard Puff said he could not specify how the mistake was made. But he said that the hospital staff believed the organs were compatible and that compatibility had been confirmed.

Jesica’s body was rejecting the new organs because of the different blood types. Antibodies in her blood attacked the organs as foreign objects.

Jesica remained on the national waiting list kept by the United Network for Organ Sharing. Spokeswoman Anne Paschke said the national organ procurement group cannot specifically search for a heart and lungs for Jesica.

“Unfortunately, there are very few organs available,” Paschke said. The organs not only have to be the right blood type, they have to be the right size to fit into the girl’s chest cavity.

Mack Mahoney, a family friend, said Jesica is small for her age — 5-foot-2 and 85 pounds — and any donated organs would probably come from a child. “We have a good chance of saving this child’s life if we find a donor in the next couple of days,” he said.

Jesica, who is from a small town near Guadalajara, Mexico, needed the transplant because a heart deformity kept her lungs from getting oxygen into her blood.

The donated organs were flown in from Boston. They were sent with paperwork correctly listing the donor’s type-A blood, said Sean Fitzpatrick of the New England Organ Bank, which sent the organs.

The hospital’s chief executive, Dr. William Fulkerson, said it was still investigating how the mistake happened and whether any staff members should be disciplined. He said the hospital will add new confirmation requirements to ensure organ compatibility.