Life Support for Texas Infant Removed
A Texas infant born with almost no brain was taken off life-support equipment that was intended to help preserve her heart and other organs for transplantation, a doctor said Saturday.
“Baby Evelyn continues to breathe on her own, but shows signs of gradual deterioration,” Dr. Joyce Peabody, chief of neonatology at Loma Linda University Medical Center, said late Saturday.
Evelyn Keys was born with a fatal genetic birth defect known as anencephaly, in which much of the upper brain and skull are missing. Loma Linda has developed the nation’s first guidelines for using such infants as organ donors.
However, Evelyn never met the hospital’s criteria for brain-death since she was born seven days ago, Peabody said. Baby Evelyn will be allowed to die naturally, she said.
Evelyn was born Feb. 20 in San Antonio to Judy Keys, 22, and Airman Todd Keys, 21.
Under the hospital’s rules, no baby is kept on life-support longer than a week, whether brain death has occurred during that time.
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