Decades later, man meets the UCLA doctor who saved his life

It ’s 1970 and 10-month-old Maurice Elias lay in a hospital bed in the pediatric intensive care unit dangerously malnourished, at just 14 pounds, and with a severe infection in his mouth. The antibiotics that doctors at UCLA had been using to treat Maurice, who had been born without a functional immu ne system, were no longer working.The only way Maurice was going to survive was a bone marrow transplant.“If we couldn't find a way to give Maurice a working immune system, he was going to die. And the only way to do so was with a risky transplant that could be fatal, too,” said Dr. Richard Stiehm, the UCLA doctor who treated Maurice for his severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID, which is commo nly known as “bubble baby” syndrome. “This was one of the most challenging cases of my career.”Nearly five decades ago, this was still an experimental procedure, having been performed successfully in a person with SCID just one time before. But the lack of a proven track record didn ’t deter the Elias family. Along with his doctors at UCLA, they were determined to save Maurice, the youngest of five children in the family.Maurice was just three months old when his mother, Carol Elias Lilly, noticed he was frequently sick. Her son always had a runny nose, frequently vomited and developed a severe form of oral thrush, a common fungal infection that appears in the mouth. Despite visits to pediatricians and rounds of antibiotics, Maurice's symptoms only worsened.“I kept ha...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news