Last week’s question asked which patient’s story was told during an event held by LLU School of Medicine in 2009 at the 25th anniversary of the historic case.
The little girl was known as Baby Fae—full name Stephanie Fae Beauclair—and she received the heart of a baboon at LLU Medical Center in 1984 in a pioneering surgical effort by Leonard Bailey, MD, to save her life after she was born prematurely with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome. At the time, no successful pediatric heart transplant had ever occurred.
The three random winners to correctly name Baby Fae are Heather Krause, Victoria Leyva, and Paula Ekema. Please e-mail pr@llu.edu to claim your prize, which must be picked up within 60 days.
Baby Fae sadly died three weeks after the successful surgery for reasons still not understood. But the case paved the way for the world’s first successful infant cardiac transplant with a human donor heart in 1985, also performed by Bailey at Loma Linda University Medical Center.
By what fictitious name was this baby known? E-mail the answer to pr@llu.edu by midnight Tuesday, August 12, for the chance to be a random winner.