A terminally ill teenager who won a legal battle against a hospital's attempt to force her to have a life-saving heart transplant said today she had endured "too much trauma".

Hannah Jones, 13, from Marden, Herefordshire, who has been in and out of hospital since the age of four, said she did not want to go through any more operations. She was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia at the age of five.

"I just decided that there were too many risks and even if I took it there might be a bad outcome afterwards. I have been in hospital too much," Jones said in an interview with Sky News.

She added: "I have had too much trauma. I didn't want this [a heart transplant] and it's not my choice to have it."

Although her decision means that she may have only months to live, Jones said: "I have made the right decision at the moment and I'm not going to change it."

She added: "There's a chance I may be well and there's a chance I may not be as well as I could be. That's a chance I'm willing to take."

Sitting beside her mother Kirsty, an intensive care nurse, the teenager said she now wanted to have a holiday with her family in Disney World, Florida.

"It's always been on my list to go away on holiday and forget about things at home," she said.

Mrs Jones said the family had sought publicity about her daughter's condition because they had been unable to get the travel insurance that would allow Hannah to make the trip.

She praised her daughter's bravery, saying: "She's absolutely fabulous. She's so grown up. There are times when she can be naughty but she's really brave and we are so proud of her."

After Jones decided against the surgery, saying she wanted to die with dignity surrounded by family and friends, Hereford hospital instigated high court proceedings. It sought to remove her, temporarily, from her parents' custody to allow the transplant.

Jones said she had been "shocked" to hear that she could be taken to hospital by force. Her mother said it had been a "terribly frightening" experience.

"We had to tell the three younger children that they had to be good and had to be quiet and Hannah might cry because she did not want to go, but we would have to let her go because otherwise we would not be allowed to come into hospital and support her afterwards," she said.

Health officials abandoned the proceedings after the teenager made her case to a child protection officer.

"The child protection lady came, and she was fabulous. She listened to what Hannah wanted, she went to the barrister's chambers, and that ended proceedings," Mrs Jones explained.

Jones's plea was conveyed to barristers at the high court in London who decided she was mature enough to make the decision for herself and the order was thrown out.

The family later received a letter from the hospital insisting that it always put the patient's "best interests" first, but the letter stopped short of an apology.

The girl's father, Andrew, an auditor, said: "It is outrageous that the people from the hospital could presume we didn't have our daughter's best interests at heart."

After being diagnosed with leukaemia, Hannah was given three doses of a high-strength drug designed to kill off an infection, but it also caused a hole to develop in her heart, which meant a transplant would provide her only long-term chance for survival.