Elizabeth Craze

Elizabeth Craze is one of the youngest known recipients of a heart transplant. She received a new heart in 1984 at the age of 2 years, 10 months. The operation was performed at Stanford Hospital, Stanford, California by the team of Norman Shumway, one of the early pioneers of heart transplant surgery. Although considered almost conventional today, in the early 1980s heart transplants (in children especially) were extremely rare. Surgery At the time of Craze's procedure, an ethics committee was formed at Stanford to review the advantages and disadvantages of possible surgery for her. It was not known at the time if a donated heart would "continue to grow along with her body." Her family pleaded for the surgery as she was gravely ill and weighed only 23 pounds. A decision to proceed was reached by the committee and the donor was a young girl from Utah who had been the victim of a car crash. Craze had three siblings who died of heart failure in infancy, and she was diagnosed at only 4 months old. Her surviving sibling, older brother Andrew, had a heart transplant at the age of 16. His operation preceded hers by one year, and Andrew was instrumental in pleading her case before the ethics committee.