LOMA LINDA--This month marks the 25-year anniversary of the first cross-species heart transplant in history.

Dr. Leonard Bailey and a team of doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center transplanted the heart of a baboon into an infant, born with a lethal heart disease and known to the world as “Baby Fae”. She only lived 20 days following the operation.

“Much of what we learned from ‘Baby Fae’s’ operation we were able to apply to the first successful infant-to-infant heart transplant just over a year later in November 1985,” says Dr. Bailey. “’Baby Moses’ is now nearly 24-years-old and doing quite well.”

Since “Baby Fae’s” transplant in 1984, Loma Linda surgeons have performed heart transplants on 312 infants under 1-year of age. The medical center’s 500th pediatric heart transplant was performed in July. (INT)

Story Date: October 18, 2009