SINGAPORE - Taiwan's ballroom dancing queen Serena Liu Chen discovered her underlying heart condition when she took her ill daughter to see a doctor. Liu is currently in hospital awaiting a heart transplant.

Speaking to Taiwan's Apple Daily News on Saturday (March 14), her husband singer Shin Lung, 48, says his wife found out about her heart condition by sheer chance.

Their four-year-old daughter had caught a cold and Liu had taken her to the doctor. When her daughter refused to have a stethoscope placed on her chest, the doctor listened to Liu's chest as a demonstration to calm the child.

That was when Liu was told that she had a heart murmur and was advised to seek further treatment.

After several consultations, the couple decided that Liu would undergo a heart valve surgery on Feb 7 - they were told it had a 95 per cent success rate.

Shin says the 44-year-old dancer and television personality was conscious up to the point of surgery, despite reports that suggest she was rushed into surgery after she fainted.

"We were celebrating our daughter's birthday (on Feb 5) before she went into surgery," he says.

Liu suffered from poor heart function following the surgery and had to be put on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a life support machine, while waiting for a heart transplant.

In response to rumours that his wife had multiple surgeries done on her brain, Shin says she had only one such surgery done - for a blood clot in her brain.

He also rubbished rumours that her weight had dropped from 48kg to 30kg due to the ordeal.

"She is bedridden for now but her weight has not changed, the hospital is paying close attention to her vitals," says Shin.

He does not know when Liu can receive a new heart.

The singer says: "We need to queue, it depends on her condition and the transplant will of course follow the law and the heart has to be the right size and fit her body's needs too."

Looking lethargic, Shin asked the public to pray for his wife and adds: "She is the one holding our family together. She's always been the one taking care of me, I'm not good at doing that myself."