Mother plays with ‘Baby Fae’

Press, 1 November 1984, Page 6

Mother plays with ‘Baby Fae’

NZPA-ReuterLoma Linda, California The delighted mother of “Baby Fae,” 18 days old, played with her daughter yesterday ignoring the controversy over the five-hour operation in which her child received a baboon’s heart. “Baby Fae” lay contented in her crib, taking food for the first time since her operation four days ago. But some doctors said that other methods could have been used to try to save “Baby Fae’s” life and that no attempt was made to obtain a human heart for the transplant. The girl, identified only

as “Baby Fae” because her parents do not want any publicity, was taken off the critical list and her condition was said by the hospital to be serious. “Her new heart is working well,” said a spokeswoman at Loma Linda University Hospital. “She has been taken off a breathing apparatus, intravenous tubes have been withdrawn and she is being fed water and glucose every four hours,” she said. “She is on her own. She is doing well,” said the spokeswoman. The girl received a heart the size of a walnut from a . seven-month-old baboon be-

cause the left side of her own heart, which pumps blood into the body, was undeveloped. ( But fellow doctors have said that no attempt was made to transplant a human heart although one was available on the day of the operation. Doctors also said that at least two surgeons, one in Philadelphia and the other in Boston, had perfected treatment for an undeveloped heart so a transplant was not needed. In Philadelphia, a member of the surgical team, Dr John Murphy, said that his group had had a 40 to 45 per cent rate of success with

100 babies who had undergone the first stage of the complicated procedure. Babies waited up to four years for the second and final stage of the operation, he said. Not enough time had elapsed to assess the quality of life for the babies. A Los Angeles professor of children’s heart diseases, Dr George Emmanouilides, said that the chances of “Baby Fae” surviving for more than a short time were remote. The head of the surgical team which performed the transplant, > Dr Leonard Bailey, has said that the next few months will be vital for “Baby Fae.”