Boy, 2, Still Critical After Transplant

Two days after receiving a heart transplant, 2-year-old Jason Jenette remained in critical condition Monday, although his surgeon said a slight improvement in his lungs raises hope that Jason may be able to breathe again without artificial support.

Dr. Anees Razzouk, the boy’s surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center, said Jason’s new heart is pumping efficiently.

But he said the child’s lungs won’t work because they are badly congested with fluid, caused by the failure of his original heart and the nine days he spent on a heart-lung machine before the transplant Saturday night.

Razzouk said he was encouraged by chest X-rays taken Monday showing that some of the air sacs in Jason’s lungs had cleared.

“At this time we have reason to believe, hopefully, that he will make tiny improvements,” the doctor said.

But Razzouk said Jason, who remains heavily sedated and attached to a ventilator and lung machine, still faces a tough battle to survive.

Joyce Johnston, clinical director of the hospital’s cardiac transplant department, said Jason is especially vulnerable to bleeding and infection as a result of drugs he is taking to improve his circulation and prevent rejection of his new heart.

Johnston said that Jason was much sicker than most children who come to Loma Linda for transplants and that he is only the second child who has had to be maintained on a heart-lung machine.

“He came to us very, very sick, and it would be a miracle if we can turn it around,” Johnston said.

She said pathologists at Loma Linda are studying the heart that was removed from Jason in an attempt to discover what caused it to suddenly fail a few weeks ago after an operation in Hawaii to repair a murmur. Before the operation, she said, Jason was an active 2-year-old.

A week ago, Jason was flown from Hawaii to Orange County on a Coast Guard cargo plane with a nine-member medical team from Children’s Hospital of Orange County. He stayed at that hospital, in the city of Orange, until a donor heart was found Saturday, and he was moved to Loma Linda for the surgery, which took 5 1/2 hours.

Razzouk said that although Jason was a “high-risk” surgical candidate, “we felt he deserved a chance, and we still do.”