Word: infant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Baby Fae, who had no defects other than her hypoplastic heart, was the first infant to come to Bailey's attention who met the criteria for his experiment. As in the case of the late Barney Clark, who in 1982 became the world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart, an elaborate consent form had been prepared. Fae's parents signed the form once, then thought over their decision for 20 hours before signing it the required second time. According to the hospital, the couple were well informed of the risks and the alternatives...
Meanwhile, Sandra Nehlsen-Cannarella, a transplantation immunologist brought in from New York City's Montefiore Medical Center, conducted five days of laboratory tests to determine which of six baboons at Loma Linda most closely matched Baby Fae's tissue type. However, before the tests were complete, the infant's heart suddenly deteriorated and her lungs filled with fluid. The dying child was swiftly transferred to a respirator and given drugs to keep her blood circulating. The measures were able to sustain her long enough for a baboon donor to be chosen and surgery to begin. (Read "The Using of Baby...
...leaving the aortic arch, as opposed to the three in humans (see diagram), two of the baby's vessels were first joined together before being connected to one of the two arterial openings in the baboon's aorta. When the delicate plumbing job was completed, doctors slowly raised the infant's temperature and weaned her from the heart-lung machine. At 11:35 a.m. on Oct. 26, four hours and five minutes after Baby Fae had first entered surgery, her new heart began to beat spontaneously. "There was absolute awe," recalls Nehlsen-Cannarella. "I don't think there...
...bravado" and that a human heart "would have offered the child a better chance of survival." Loma Linda Surgeon David Hinshaw explained that he and his colleagues believed that the hope of finding a compatible human heart in time to save the dying Fae was "almost nonexistent." Indeed, infant hearts are so seldom available that transplants into very young children are rarely attempted. (Read "One Miracle, Many Doubts...
Ironically, the heart of a two-month-old infant was available the day of Fae's operation. Transplant coordinators from the Regional Organ Procurement Agency at UCLA called Loma Linda hospital to offer the infant's kidneys (the heart was not discussed because Loma Linda does not have a human-heart-transplant program). When word of the potential human donor became public last week, Loma Linda officials explained that the call from the procurement agency had come after the baboon heart was implanted, that the heart of a two-month-old might have been too big for Fae, and that...