Heart diagram
Credit: OHSU News
Four-month-old Fatemeh Reshad was born with a complex, life-threatening heart defect known as transposition of the great arteries, or TGA. TGA with ventricular septal defect affects approximately 2 in 10,000 newborns each year. Although this defect is rare, OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital and other congenital cardiac centers in the United States routinely care for children with this condition. In the United States, the standard approach for a child born with this defect is to perform heart surgery, typically within several days to several weeks of birth. Generally speaking, the surgery has a very high rate of success. (OHSU)