NORTHWEST
East Oregonian
Page 2A
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Oregon’s only heart transplant
hospital suspends procedures
PORTLAND (AP) — The only hospital
in Oregon that does heart transplants is sus-
pending its program for 14 days because of
a shortage of doctors qualified to do the spe-
cialized surgery.
The move leaves more than two dozen
patients to decide whether to wait out the
temporary shut-down or seek care at another
medical center, a newspaper reported
Tuesday.
Oregon Health & Science University in
Portland made the decision to temporarily
freeze its program after three cardiologists
on the transplant team left or announced
plans to leave, The Oregonian/OregonLive
reported .
OHSU won’t evaluate new patients for a
transplant, accept donor hearts or perform
any transplant surgeries for two weeks.
Cardiac patients who don’t need trans-
plants can still be treated at OHSU, includ-
ing for such procedures as pacemaker
implantation, said Renee Edwards, chief
medical officer for OHSU Healthcare. The
transplant team is also adequately staffed
to follow up with anyone who’s recently
received a new heart, she said.
During this 14-day period, Edwards
said, administrators will focus on recruiting
transplantation and heart failure specialists
to run the program, including in surgery and
post-operative care. The suspension could
extend beyond two weeks, Edwards said.
“It was not an easy decision to make as
the only heart transplant center in Oregon.
We feel a tremendous amount of responsi-
bility,” Edwards told the newspaper.
Edwards said the departures on the heart
transplant team were primarily for career
and family reasons. Two will stay on at
OHSU until the end of September.
When executives learned of the pend-
ing changes Friday, they made the decision
to suspend the program, which has run for
32 years, out of concern that patients who
undergo surgery wouldn’t have someone to
guide their care afterward, the newspaper
reported.
Eighteen heart transplants were done at
OHSU in 2016 and 30 more were completed
at OHSU in 2017, according to federal data.
For those on the transplant list, the news
is devastating.
Dianna Howell, 58, of Albany, was diag-
nosed with heart failure in 2016 after pass-
ing out at work. She has been on the heart
transplant list for 13 months and was told
when she was placed on it that she had about
18 months to live.
“It was a transplant or hospice,” she said.
Howell learned Friday at her monthly
appointment that her doctor, Dr. Jonathan
Davis, was leaving the program, and two
others are also leaving.
On Saturday, they got a call from Dr.
James Mudd, another physician on the
OHSU transplant team, who said the entire
program was being put on hold.
For Howell, that means starting over with
transplant programs in Seattle or the San
Francisco Bay Area.
She wonders whether she will live
long enough to get established in the other
programs.
“I just want OHSU to fix this. This is
a wonderful program with great stats and
really good doctors,” she said.
Information from: The Oregonian/Ore-
gonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com
Associated Press File
A federal judge has given the go-ahead for a thinning project along the Lostine
River in northeast Oregon.
Wallowa thinning project
passes legal muster
Forest Service is thinning
2,000 acres in Wallowa-
Whitman National Forest
Forecast for Pendleton Area
THURSDAY
TODAY
Hazy sunshine
Not as warm with
hazy sunshine
89° 58°
78° 54°
FRIDAY
SATURDAY
Partly sunny and
nice
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
EO Media Group
SUNDAY
Nice with plenty of
sunshine
Sunny, breezy and
pleasant
PENDLETON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
78° 49°
82° 53°
80° 53°
HERMISTON TEMPERATURE FORECAST
92° 59°
82° 55°
81° 51°
85° 53°
OREGON FORECAST
83° 53°
ALMANAC
Shown is today’s weather. Temperatures are today’s highs and tonight’s lows.
PENDLETON
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Seattle
Olympia
66/58
82/53
88/53
Longview
Kennewick Walla Walla
89/61
Lewiston
73/58
92/59
Astoria
67/57
Pullman
Yakima 87/55
72/54
89/59
Portland
Hermiston
79/59
The Dalles 92/59
Salem
Corvallis
78/54
Yesterday
Normals
Records
La Grande
86/51
PRECIPITATION
John Day
Eugene
Bend
82/54
85/47
88/53
Ontario
87/59
Caldwell
Burns
81°
43°
85°
54°
101° (1986) 40° (1964)
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
Albany
82/54
0.00"
0.05"
0.18"
5.15"
6.65"
6.10"
WINDS (in mph)
87/56
86/42
0.00"
0.03"
0.38"
6.52"
11.37"
8.33"
through 3 p.m. yest.
HIGH
LOW
TEMP.
Pendleton 83/46
82/56
24 hours ending 3 p.m.
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Last year to date
Normal year to date
HERMISTON
Enterprise
89/58
86/62
80°
46°
84°
55°
105° (1972) 37° (1909)
PRECIPITATION
Moses
Lake
71/56
Aberdeen
80/52
82/59
Tacoma
Yesterday
Normals
Records
Spokane
Wenatchee
71/57
Today
Boardman
Pendleton
Medford
90/55
Thu.
WSW 7-14
W 7-14
WSW 7-14
W 8-16
SUN AND MOON
Klamath Falls
84/45
Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2018
Sunrise today
Sunset tonight
Moonrise today
Moonset today
6:12 a.m.
7:39 p.m.
9:28 p.m.
9:18 a.m.
Last
New
First
Full
Sep 2
Sep 9
Sep 16
Sep 24
NATIONAL EXTREMES
Yesterday’s National Extremes: (for the 48 contiguous states)
High 107° in Blythe, Calif. Low 27° in Utica, Mont.
NATIONAL WEATHER TODAY
Shown are noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.
-10s
-0s
0s
showers t-storms
10s
rain
20s
flurries
30s
snow
40s
ice
50s
211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton 541-276-2211
333 E. Main St., Hermiston 541-567-6211
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60s
cold front
— Founded Oct. 16, 1875 —
Environmentalists have failed to con-
vince a federal judge that a 2,000-acre
thinning project in Northeast Oregon’s
Wallowa-Whitman National Forest vio-
lated environmental law.
Last year, the Greater Hells Canyon
Council and Oregon Wild nonprofits filed
a lawsuit challenging the Lostine Public
Safety Project, which aims to reduce wild-
fire and insect problems along roughly 11
miles of the Lostine River.
A U.S. magistrate judge disagreed with
the plaintiffs’ contention that the fuel reduc-
tion project was improperly excluded from
environmental studies under the National
Environmental Policy Act and dismissed
their other allegations.
Those findings have been upheld by
U.S. District Judge Michael Simon, who
has ruled in favor of the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice and Wallowa County — which inter-
vened in the case — by dismissing the
lawsuit.
Simon has agreed with the earlier ruling
that the federal government properly used a
“categorical exclusion” to exempt the proj-
ect from the usual requirement of prepar-
ing an environmental assessment or more
in-depth environmental impact statement.
In this case, the agency didn’t have to
analyze whether “extraordinary circum-
stances” called for such studies due to pro-
visions in the 2014 Farm Bill that allowed
“categorical exclusions” outright for cer-
tain ecologically oriented forest treat-
ments, the ruling said.
Likewise, wildlife and botanical reports
associated with the project meet the
requirements of the forest plan for the Wal-
lowa-Whitman National Forest and didn’t
violate the National Forest Management
Act by failing to ensure “species viability
and recovery,” the ruling said.
The project also complies with the “wild
and scenic river” plan for the Lostine River
because the Forest Service properly deter-
mined its long-term effects would benefit
the river’s “outstandingly remarkable val-
ues,” according to the judge.
The agency’s collaboration on the proj-
ect was sufficient under the Healthy For-
est Restoration Act as well, the ruling said.
“Instead of participating, plaintiffs often
objected to how the Project was being
developed, rather than providing meaning-
ful, substantive input.”
70s
80s
90s
100s
warm front stationary front
110s
high
low
Portland attorney authored
complaint against Brown-Nike deal
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A complaint
alleging that a ballot initiative agreement
negotiated by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown,
Nike and a public employees union was
illegal was authored by an attorney affili-
ated with political opponents of both Brown
and unions.
Attorney Jill Gibson acknowledged Fri-
day that she had drafted the complaint filed
last month with the Oregon Secretary of
State’s office by a Portland man named
Richard Leonetti, Oregon Public Broad-
casting reported Monday.
The complaint challenged the deal to
keep an initiative off the ballot that the
Democratic governor helped broker in early
July.
The union-backed initiative would have
required Nike and other large companies
to disclose tax payments and other busi-
ness details. The unions dropped the pro-
posal. Around the same time, Nike donated
$100,000 to a political action commit-
tee campaigning against ballot initiatives
opposed by Brown and the unions.
The complaint argued that the arrange-
ment violated a state law.
The state Department of Justice declined
to investigate the complaint earlier this
month.
Leonetti previously refused to say who
wrote the complaint he filed. But Gibson
emailed the department after it declined the
investigation.
Gibson declined to say who hired her to
draft the complaint. She was a former attor-
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AP Photo/Don Ryan, File
In this May 15, 2018, file photo, Oregon
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown sports a
green Vote T-shirt as she greets students
during a “get out the vote” gathering at
Portland State University in Portland.
ney for Oregon House Republicans, and she
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The state Department of Justice is stand-
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The Secretary of State’s Office must still
decide if it will investigate the deal as a pos-
sible election law violation.
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