Baby Fae, the 25 year anniversary of a ground breaking procedure

October 26, 2009 by Baby Chums
Filed under: Baby Health, News

Dr. Leonard Bailey of Baby Fae fame pictured on the right

It’s a special day for Dr. Leonard Bailey, 66, who gained international fame in 1984 after transplanting a baboon’s heart into an infant girl. Twenty-five years ago today, the eyes of the world were on a baby girl who needed a heart, Baby Fae.

Stephanie “Fae” Beauclair died less than a month after receiving a baboon heart, however, more than 500 young patients since have received heart transplants at Loma Linda University Medical Center.

“The bottom line is Baby Fae’s legacy is a strong one - there have been several thousand babies salvaged now who would not (have made it) otherwise,” said Dr. Leonard Bailey.

“I think she sent word around the world that people should think about newborns, too.”

Cross-species organ transplants are gone due to controversies over potential infections. But the Baby Fae transplant paved the way for the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant in a child a year later.

Bailey said: “The majority of these children were programmed from conception to not be in this world ever more than just birthing and dying. Their lifespan was in days. When you think about it it’s really quite amazing the quite large cadre of kids who have grown up,

“In those days, the advice to parents was to leave the baby here to die or take it home to die,” Bailey recalls.

On the day of her death, the surgeon made a rare public appearance to inform members of the press gathered outside the hospital. Reports said he was nearly breaking with emotion. “Infants with heart disease yet to be born will some day soon have the opportunity to live, thanks to the courage of this infant and her parents,” Time magazine reported him as saying.

Bailey has spent his life working to lengthen the lifespan of infants born with an untimely death sentence. Many stay in contact.

Teresa, Baby Fae’s mother, is working hard to put herself through nursing school in Kansas. She and Bailey will reunite October 31 for the debut of a documentary titled Stephanie’s Heart: The Story of Baby Fae.