Just-Born Boy Is Youngest Heart Recipient

A red-haired baby boy with a congenital heart defect became the world’s youngest heart transplant recipient Friday night just hours after he was delivered from his Canadian mother by Caesarean section at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

The infant, dubbed “Baby Paul,” was reported in critical but stable condition in the hospital’s intensive-care unit after the historic transplant surgery ended about 7:30 p.m. at the San Bernardino County facility.

“It’s a success,” hospital spokesman Dick Schaefer told reporters in announcing the surgery was over.

Hospital officials said that medical personnel would keep a round-the-clock vigil to monitor Baby Paul’s condition.

The delivery itself was “pretty routine,” and the 6-pound, 6 3/4-ounce baby was “doing well, looking pink, and crying,” said obstetrician Elmar Sakala, who performed the Caesarean section.

The infant was placed on a breathing machine immediately after the 10:54 a.m. delivery as physicians rushed to stabilize his condition for the transplant.

The infant had been diagnosed nine weeks ago in Canada as having hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the side of the heart that pumps blood into the body’s principal artery fails to develop. Infants with the defect normally die within hours or days of birth.

The couple was referred to Loma Linda, a Seventh Day Adventist medical center about 60 miles east of Los Angeles. There, the diagnosis was confirmed on Sept. 30 by echocardiography, a procedure in which high-frequency sound waves are used to produce a picture of the heart that reveals any structural abnormalities that may be present.

After the delivery Friday, physicians repeated the imaging procedure and reconfirmed the diagnosis.

Removed Defective Heart

By 2 p.m., surgeons began the 5 1/2-hour procedure of removing the defective heart and replacing it with a walnut-sized donor heart. The operation is especially delicate because of the small size of the heart and of the blood vessels leading to and from it.

Loma Linda officials said little about the infant donor, other than to say that the female child, born without a brain, was from eastern Canada.

The transplant team was led by Dr. Leonard Bailey, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Loma Linda, who performed the first infant heart transplant on 4-day-old Baby Moses on Nov. 16, 1985. Baby Moses, who Loma Linda officials said is “doing fine,” was previously the youngest infant to undergo the procedure.

Friday’s operations capped a hectic three days for the baby’s parents, who were identified by the Vancouver Sun as Alice Holt, 35, and Gordon Holt, 39, of Surrey, a Vancouver suburb. Loma Linda spokeswoman Joyce McClintock described Mr. Holt only as being self-employed.

Located Potential Donor

Hospital physicians telephoned Mrs. Holt, who was in the 37th week of a normal 38-to-42-week pregnancy, Wednesday night to tell the Holts that a potential heart donor had been located.

The couple was flown from British Columbia to Southern California by air ambulance early Thursday. They left their 5-year-old son, Jason, at home in Surrey with Mrs. Holt’s mother.

Physicians spent Thursday evaluating the suitability of the donor’s tissues. The brain-dead infant was kept on life-support equipment until its heart was removed immediately before the transplant operation began. Sakala said Friday that the heart appeared to be a “good match” that had minimal risk of being rejected.

There is no cure for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, and the heart transplants performed by Bailey are still considered experimental, as is another operation that attempts to repair the defect.

Bailey’s first transplant attempt, in October, 1984, made medical history when an infant girl named Baby Fae lived 20 days after receiving a baboon heart.

He has since transplanted human donor hearts into eight infants, all under the age of 6 months. Five have survived.

Times staff writer George Ramos contributed to this story.