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'Tears of joy' after Baby Noor's surgeryDoctor: Operation smooth, but she still faces medical challenges
 The doctor who operated on Noor says she "just radiates good feeling." HEALTH LIBRARYHOW TO HELPDonations can be sent to: Shepherd of the Hills United Methodist Church 4283 Chapel Hill Road Douglasville, Georgia 30135 www.lifeover.org YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Surgery to realign and enclose the spinal column of a 3-month-old Iraqi girl brought to the United States for life-saving medical treatment was difficult but went "very well," doctors said Monday. The infant, nicknamed Baby Noor by the media after being discovered by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, suffers from spina bifida and is paraplegic. She was doing well after the surgery, which went smoothly, said Dr. Roger Hudgins, the pediatric neurosurgeon treating her at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Noor's father and grandmother, who came with her from Iraq to Atlanta, were anxious before the surgery and relieved at the news it went well, said Christina Potter, the U.S. director for Childspring International, the charity that helped arrange the trip. "When Dr. Hudgins came up after the surgery and declared that the surgery was a success and exceeded expectations, there were tears of joy," Potter said. Tuesday, Noor will undergo a brain scan to determine whether fluid is building up in her brain, Hudgins said. If so, doctors may perform additional surgery Wednesday to allow the fluid to drain, he said. Although the usual treatment would be to place a tube, or shunt, in her brain to drain the fluid, Hudgins said he might try an alternative procedure because the shunt requires monitoring by a neurosurgeon, which could prove difficult once the girl returns to Iraq. The alternative procedure involves using a fiber optic tube to create internal pathways in the brain where fluid can drain, but the procedure rarely works in infants, he said. Spina bifida is a birth defect in which the vertebrae do not form correctly around the spinal cord. It is the most common of a group of birth defects called neural tube defects, affecting about one in 2,000 babies in the United States, Hudgins said. The treatment involves realigning the cord, and covering it with muscle and tissue. During the surgery Monday, a mass was also removed from Noor's back. In her case, the surgery was complicated by the fact that she was not treated until she was 3 months old, after tissue had grown over her spinal cord, Hudgins said. Ideally, surgery to treat spina bifida is carried out within days of birth. "This is not the time we typically close a defect such as this," he said. Soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Brigade found the sick baby during a routine "knock-and-search" of the family's Baghdad home and worked with U.S. officials and charitable groups to bring Noor to Atlanta for treatment. Doctors have said she would have died without surgery. Despite the treatment, she still faces significant medical challenges. Hudgins said tests have confirmed that Noor will be a paraplegic, without use of her legs, and is also likely to have problems controlling her bowel and bladder. However, the baby appears to be mentally alert and active, he said. "She just radiates good feeling. She looks you in the eye. She is smiling now. She is cooing in the most delightful little way," he said. "It is my hope that she will be developmentally and mentally normal," he said. "We take care of a lot of children with spina bifida, many of whom are paraplegic but do very, very well." The doctors and the hospital are donating their services. 
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