Today in History: Infant girl receives healthy baboon heart
A 14-day-old girl had her defective heart replaced with the heart of a baboon.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, Dr Leonard L Bailey performed the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl’s defective heart with the healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon.
The infant, who became known as ‘Baby Fae’, was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a deformity that is almost fatal and is found in newborns in which parts or all of the left side of the heart is missing. A few days after Baby Fae’s birth, Loma Linda heart surgeon Dr Bailey convinced Baby Fae’s mother to allow him to try the experimental baboon heart transplant.
Three other humans had received animal heart transplants, the last in 1977, but none survived longer than 3,5 days. Bailey argued that an infant with an underdeveloped immune system would be less likely to reject alien tissue than an adult.
Baby Fae survived the operation, and her subsequent struggle for life received international attention. After living longer than any other human recipient of an animal heart, Baby Fae’s body made a concerted effort to reject the alien transplant.
The rejection is thought to have been caused largely by a humoral response against the graft, due to Fae’s type O blood creating antibodies against the type AB xenograft. The blood type incompatibility was seen as unavoidable: fewer than one per cent of baboons are type O, and Loma Linda only had seven young female baboons – all of which were type AB – available as potential donors.
Doctors were forced to increase dosages of an immuno-suppressive drug, leading to kidney failure. Ultimately, her doctors were defeated by the swift onset of heart failure, and on 15 November, Baby Fae died, having held on for 20 days.
Do you perhaps have more information pertaining to this story? Email us at northsider@caxton.co.za (remember to include your contact details) or phone us on 011 955 1130.
For free daily local news on the West Rand, also visit our sister newspaper websites
