An Iranian infant who needs life-saving heart surgery and was temporarily barred from entering the U.S. by President Donald Trump’s travel ban has made it to Portland.
Four-month-old Fatemeh Reshad has been admitted into OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, the hospital said in a news release Tuesday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection authorized boarding for the infant and her parents late last week.
“Fatemeh looks well. Our tests this morning have confirmed her diagnosis and the urgent need for treatment,” said Dr. Laurie Armsby, interim head of the hospital’s Division of Pediatric Cardiology, said in a statement. “As we suspected, her heart condition has resulted in injury to her lungs, however the studies today indicate that she has presented to us in time to reverse this process.”
The infant was born with a congenital heart disease that hinders about two in 10,000 newborns annually. Her medical treatment will start with a cardiac catheterization, and a five- to six-hour surgery will come next.
In a normal heart, blood pumps to the body and returns to the heart, then is pumped into the lungs where it picks up oxygen before again returning to the heart, Armsby explained on Saturday. In Fatemah’s heart, blood flows from the body into the heart, but instead of flowing into the lungs, it is pumped back into the body without the oxygen the lungs are meant to provide.
Under normal circumstances, the heart circulates blood in a series — heart to body to heart to lungs and back to body — but Fatemah’s heart works more like two parallel circulations, with one circulating blood in the body and another in the lungs, but without the two ever intermingling.
She can be expected “to live a full and active life” after surgery, Armsby said.
This report will be updated.
— Jim Ryan and Kale Williams
jryan@oregonian.com; kwilliams@oregonian.com
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