Infant Girl Gets Heart Transplant at Loma Linda
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LOMA LINDA — An infant heart was transplanted Saturday into the chest of an 8-day-old Southern California girl suffering from a fatal heart condition.
Doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center, the site of eight such operations in the last two years, said the child was in critical but stable condition.
The girl, identified only as Victoria, suffered from hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is seriously underdeveloped, hospital spokeswoman Anita Rockwell said.
The child’s parents were identified by the first names only: Michael, 31, a production manager for a lumber company, and Wendy, 21, a homemaker. They have a 3-year-old son.
Of the eight babies under 6 months of age to undergo heart transplant surgery at the Loma Linda center since November, 1985, six have survived, Rockwell said.
Dr. Leonard Bailey, who supervised the other seven operations, performed Saturday’s. Bailey also performed the controversial transplant of a baboon heart into the chest of an infant known as Baby Fae in 1984. The girl died 20 days later.
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