Stephanie Fae Beauclair was the first one on which the cross-specie heart surgery was done 25 years ago. In 1984, Dr. Leonard Bailey did an experimental heart surgery on the kid and a baboon heart was transplanted. Cross-specie organ transplants were suggested many years ago but the surgeons weren’t sure whether it would be successful or not.
In 1984, an infant named Stephanie Fae Beauclair, with a heart disease, was brought to Dr. Leonard. Dr. Leonard wanted to experiment the animal-to-human heart transplant on the infant. The surgery was done and a baboon’s heart was transplanted into the body of the infant.
Dr. Leaonard recalls the experimental surgery and tells that Teresa Beauclair visited Loma Linda University Medical Center with her infant daughter Stephanie who had an underdevelopment of the heart’s left side.
Dr. Leonard says that in those days the only advice which doctors used to give the parents was to let the child die in the hospital or take it home to die. Due to the absence of an available human heart, Fae’s mother allowed the Dr. Bailey to transplant a baboon’s heart which he did. The kid lived for 21 days after the transplant which was more than what the doctors expected.
The very question that whether animal organs can be planted into human body is still a controversy, but the surgery paved the path for pediatric heart transplants. After the surgery of Stephanie Fae Beauclair, Dr. Bailey said, ‘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.’
The experimental surgery provided a way to the doctors to implement human-to-human heart transplants in infants and hence hundreds of kids were saved from dying since 1984.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center, more than 500 infants have been treated surgically for their heart diseases since then and hence many kids found a new life.
Stephanie Fae Beauclair
