Boy, 7, Suffering Rejection of Second Heart Transplant

Jesse Sepulveda, the 7-year-old boy who underwent a pioneering heart transplant as an infant and then had a second lifesaving transplant last month, was in critical condition Monday afternoon, fighting for survival as his body rejected the new heart.

The boy’s parents asked officials at Loma Linda University Medical Center to publicize Jesse’s condition because they wanted people to pray for their son.

“He is being treated for severe rejection,” said hospital spokesman Dick Schaefer. “He is in intensive care right now and everything is being done for him that can be done.”

The infant known as Baby Jesse made medical news on June 10, 1986, when, at 4 days old, he became the fourth infant ever to undergo a heart transplant. Dr. Leonard Bailey--the surgeon who gained fame when he implanted a baboon heart into an infant known as Baby Fae--performed the operation, in which Jesse received the heart of a brain-dead Michigan infant.

Like most of the 155 infants who have undergone such transplants, Jesse was born with a condition known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome--an underdevelopment of the left side of the heart. Without the operation, the condition would have been fatal.

Jesse’s transplant generated controversy because Jesse was at first rejected as a transplant candidate, and then accepted after his family’s priest made his case public. He fared well after the initial operation; Schaefer said he was among the 20% of youngsters who did not have even one episode of rejection.

But recently, the child experienced a side effect that sometimes occurs with heart transplants in people of any age: His coronary vessels began narrowing, as though he were an old man.

“That has happened to two of the other children, but it stopped and never did develop more than just a little bit,” Schaefer said. “On him it continued. He was heading for a heart attack.”

He received the second heart June 16 and was released from the hospital 11 days later in good condition. Earlier this month, Schaefer said, Jesse began showing signs of rejection. He was readmitted to Loma Linda last Tuesday.