Inset: Dr. Ashok Muralidaran (OHSU/YouTube). Background: An Oregon Health & Science University building (KGW).
A 13-year-old Oregon girl spent more than two weeks clinging to life after her pediatric surgeon "mistakenly installed" a heart valve in her chest "upside down," a lawsuit says.
"Her condition deteriorated … and she was very near death," Steven Stokes and Lori Stokes allege about their daughter in a legal complaint obtained by Law&Crime.
Oregon Health & Science University and its staff even went so far as to advise the Stokeses that if they left their daughter, who ultimately survived the medical ordeal, at the OHSU hospital, its palliative care team would need to "consult" with them "regarding end-of-life decision making, including the possibility of harvesting [their daughter's] healthy organs for transplant into other patients," according to the complaint.
"Defendants advised [the girl's] parents that if they left [the girl] at OHSU she would die, and she was now so gravely ill that it was likely she would die en route to a medical center that might be able to save her life," the complaint alleges.
The Stokeses say their daughter needed open heart surgery in August 2025 for the purpose of implanting a "mechanical mitral valve in her heart." An OHSU surgery team led by Dr. Ashok Muralidaran, who is OHSU's head of pediatric and congenital cardiac surgery, "intentionally stopped" the girl's heart and she was put on cardiac bypass.
At the end of surgery, Muralidaran and his team were unable to restart the girl's heart and take her off cardiac bypass, so they put her on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, a system that mechanically pumped her blood to a heart-lung machine that reoxygenated and recirculated it into her body. She was then transferred to OHSU's intensive care unit after falling "critically ill," per the complaint.
"[The girl's] parents were told by defendants, in substance, that the mitral valve implantation procedure had gone very well; that Isabelle's heart was probably not functioning adequately because of the 'shock' of surgery; and that ECMO should allow her heart to rest, recover, and begin functioning properly," the complaint recounts.
However, the Stokeses' daughter did not recover, and she remained in the ICU for 18 days, according to the parents. An "exploratory surgery" was conducted in an effort to diagnose the cause of, and remedy, her inadequate heart functioning.
"Following that surgery defendants told [the girl's] parents, in substance, that there was no explanation for her continued inadequate heart function other than the 'shock' of surgery; and that she could not survive indefinitely on ECMO," the complaint says.
OHSU staff operated on the girl's heart at least three times and repeatedly claimed they could not figure out what was wrong with her. They told the Stokeses that her condition had deteriorated further and she would require either permanent implantation of an artificial heart, or heart transplant, for survival and that OHSU was incapable of performing either of those surgeries.
According to the complaint, their daughter's "only hope for survival" was transfer to a more sophisticated out-of-state medical center — which is exactly what they did.
"Rather than allowing [their daughter] to die at OHSU, her parents made the gut-wrenching decision to risk having her transported to Seattle Children's Hospital, which had agreed to accept her as a patient, provided she survived the trip," the complaint says.
In the ensuing days, multiple invasive procedures were performed on the girl, including surgery to remove accumulated blood, clot and fluid from her open chest incision and adjust the ECMO system. Her condition began to stabilize and a cardiac CT scan was obtained, which finally revealed the alleged truth.
"The prosthetic mitral valve implanted by defendants appeared to be improperly positioned inside her heart and was not functioning as it should," the complaint says, noting how surgeons at Seattle Children's Hospital performed open-heart surgery to get a closer look.
"Visual inspection by the surgical team confirmed that defendants had implanted the prosthetic mitral valve upside down, which is why [the girl's] heart had not been functioning properly," the complaint alleges. "The surgical team removed the malpositioned valve and replaced it with a different prosthetic mitral valve, properly positioned. [The girl's] heart promptly began functioning sufficiently well that she was successfully removed from cardiac bypass and no longer required ECMO."
The Stokeses are suing OHSU and Dr. Muralidaran, claiming he "negligently implanted" the prosthetic mitral valve into their daughter's heart upside down and almost caused her to die.
Law&Crime could not reach them for comment. An OHSU spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by The Oregonian, citing the pending litigation. Dr. Ashok Muralidaran didn't respond to the newspaper's request for comment.
"It's a complete and egregious screw-up," Portland attorney Robert Wagner, who is representing the Stokeses, told The Oregonian. He said the Stokeses' daughter is now in much better health.
"She is making a miraculous recovery," he told the paper.
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