Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 2, 1991 TAG: 9104020406
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-7 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium
"He's thriving on just breast-feeding, and that really is quite an accomplishment," said Dr. David H. Johnson, director of pediatric cardiology at Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters, where the surgery was performed March 7 on Joshua Adam Huneycutt of Suffolk.
Joshua was barely a week old when he underwent the procedure. Born with a congenital heart defect, he had a left aorta and ventricle that were too small to pump enough blood out of his heart to circulate through his body.
"There for a while, we didn't know if he was going to live," said the boy's father, J. Grant Huneycutt. "They didn't give us any hope when we first came over here."
Joshua's heart defect created complications for the rest of his body, including internal bleeding and malfunctions of his kidneys and liver.
A heart transplant was out of the question until those problems had been stabilized. But a couple of days after birth, the infant's kidneys started functioning. About three days later, so did his liver.
"We had a lot of people praying for him," said Huneycutt, president of a Suffolk heating and air-conditioning business. "The doctors were amazed at the rapid turnaround."
But the improvement did not extend to the boy's heart, which was severely overworked. So his name was placed on a national computer list that matches heart donors and recipients.
"It was a race against time," his father said. The next day, a donor heart was located and the operation was performed.
"We are very grateful that God allowed things to work as they did," Huneycutt said. "We're also grateful for the thoughtfulness of the donor family. In order for our Joshua to live, it meant they had to go through a very sorrowful time. For that, we keep them in our prayers."
Hospital officials said organ-sharing regulations prevent the disclosure of the name or the location of donor families.
Huneycutt, 44, and his wife Betty, 40, have four other children. Joshua will have to come back for regular checks, the first one today. .
In the five years since heart-transplant surgery has been performed on newborns, only 37 infants have undergone the procedure, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
Johnson said the long-term survival prospects for infant patients are difficult to determine because there have so few such operations.
by CNB