California Infant Dies of Baby Fae Defect

A 9-day-old California baby identified as having the same fatal heart defect that afflicted Baby Fae died Saturday after corrective heart surgery.

Baby Rodriquez, born to a Santa Ana couple Jan. 23 and airlifted to Boston last week, died at Children’s Hospital after undergoing a three-hour hypoplastic left heart procedure on Friday, a hospital spokeswoman said.

“The baby underwent the first stage of surgery to correct the heart condition and it didn’t go as well as might have been expected,” the spokeswoman said.

The congenital malformation, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, prevents the left side of the heart from pumping blood into the body.

Baby Rodriquez, who had not yet been given a first name, was born at Chapman General Hospital in Orange, Calif., to Mariela Rodriquez Orosco and Louis Orosco of Santa Ana and was subsequently transferred to the Martin Luther Hospital in Anaheim.

A pair of anonymous donors gave $31,000 to fly the child, a medical team and the infant’s parents to Boston.

The parents and doctors had earlier considered sending the baby to Dr. Leonard Bailey for an infant-to-infant transplant at Loma Linda University Medical Center, but abandoned the option when no donor heart was immediately available.

Bailey made headlines in 1984 when he transplanted the heart of a baboon into Baby Fae, who rejected the new heart and died three weeks after the historic operation.

Bailey recently performed two successful infant-to-infant transplants on babies known as Baby Moses and Baby Eve, who suffered from the same defect.