Hannah Cheriyan was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. Just hours old and in respiratory distress, she was airlifted to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at U-M’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
For four days, Cheriyan relied on a machine to perform the work of her heart and lungs, giving her lungs necessary time to heal. That machine, known as ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, saved her life.
Twenty-one years later, Cheriyan was at U-M again — this time walking the stage in the 2015 White Coat Ceremony, a ritual welcoming students into medical school. And Robert Bartlett, M.D., the Michigan doctor who devoted his career to developing ECMO, “cloaked” Cheriyan with her first official white coat.
Read more about Hannah’s incredible story in Michigan Medicine Headlines.