Canadian Infant Has Heart Transplant at Loma Linda

An 8 1/2-week-old Canadian girl born with a fatal heart defect Tuesday became the seventh infant to receive a human heart transplant at the Loma Linda University Medical Center.

Baby Kari, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was reported in critical condition after undergoing the four-hour surgery in the early morning hours, a hospital spokeswoman said. The infant was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the side of the heart which pumps blood fails to develop.

Baby Kari’s parents, identified only as Ken, 30, a corrections officer, and Linda, 28, a registered nurse, brought her to Loma Linda soon after she was born. But the newborn had to wait seven weeks until a donor heart could be obtained.

Baby Kari’s surgery was performed by Dr. Leonard Bailey, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery, who pioneered infant heart transplants. As is customary, Bailey made no public comment after surgery and no additional information about the heart donor was released.

Four of Bailey’s six previous infant heart transplant recipients are still living. The longest survivor is Baby Moses; he celebrated the one-year anniversary of his transplant at a party at Loma Linda last month.

Bailey has also performed a human heart transplant on a three-year-old girl earlier this year and a baboon-to-human heart transplant in 1984 in the infant known as Baby Fae. Both of those patients died.