The Region : Hospital Seeks Heart Donors for Infants

Loma Linda University Medical Center doctors put out an appeal for infant heart donors, saying that two baby girls will die of cardiac defects unless they receive heart transplants. “We’re issuing an urgent appeal for two (human) newborn donor hearts to help these babies survive,” said Dick Schaefer, spokesman for the hospital where the infant known as Baby Fae received a baboon’s heart in 1984. Both babies are 3-month-old girls from Southern California, and efforts to locate heart donors through California and national organ banks during the last month have been unsuccessful, Schaefer said. “Both of them will die in the near future if they don’t get heart transplants,” although it is not known exactly how long they can survive, Schaefer said.