5-Week-Old Boy Improving After Heart Transplant

Jonathan Laszlo Mark, a 5-week-old Redondo Beach boy who underwent a heart transplant operation Wednesday night, was reported in critical but stable condition Thursday at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

His condition improved almost immediately after the operation, said his father, 26-year-old Kevin Mark.

“His color is much better. He’s breathing real nice and calm. His heart rate’s nice. He looks just great,” Mark said as he watched his son in a special section of the neonatal intensive care unit at the San Bernardino County hospital. “I’m sitting next to him right now, holding his hand.”

Although Jonathan was encased in an oxygen tent earlier this week, he was using only a respirator Thursday. Doctors hope he will soon be breathing on his own. If all goes well, Mark said, his son could leave the hospital in 10 to 20 days.

The heart of an infant Jonathan’s age weighs only about an ounce and is the size of a walnut, hospital officials said.

Jonathan was born Dec. 16 with a rare condition called hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, in which the left side of the heart is so severely underdeveloped that it cannot pump blood properly. Doctors said he would have died in a few months without a transplant.

The Marks waited four weeks until a donor heart was located Wednesday. Even as the delicate surgery got under way, the first-time parents put out a plea for other donors to help infants nationwide who still need donor hearts.

“I don’t want it to be forgotten that they are still waiting,” said Eva Mark, 26, a Torrance travel agent, as she waited during her son’s surgery.

Nationally, most organ donors are between the age of 18 and 45 and die of such traumas as car accidents, gunshot wounds and drownings, said a spokeswoman at the United Network for Organ Sharing, a Richmond, Va.-based organization. Since fewer infants die under such circumstances, fewer infant donor organs are available, the spokeswoman said.

Jonathan became the 124th infant under the age of 6 months to receive a heart transplant at the Loma Linda medical center since it began the technique in November, 1985. A total of 101 of those children are still alive, a hospital spokesman said.

Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, the surgeon who performed the transplant on Jonathan, performed the controversial 1984 cross-species transplant of a baboon heart into an infant girl known as Baby Faye. The girl, who died 21 days after the surgery, also suffered from hypoplastic left-heart syndrome.

The Marks received word about midnight Tuesday that a donor heart had been found. Bailey and a surgical team flew to an undisclosed location on a rented Learjet to retrieve the heart, returning to Loma Linda about 4 p.m. Wednesday with the donor heart in a cooler, a hospital spokeswoman said.

The parents learned at 7 p.m. that the heart had been implanted and was working, and the surgery was completed about 8 p.m.

Kevin Mark said that he has not been told the identity of the donor but that he will send his condolences and thanks through the hospital.

“They gave us the ultimate gift,” Mark said. “They’ll always have a special place in our hearts.”