WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 07: U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrives in the Rose Garden to speak at the White House May 7, 2018 in Washington, DC. Trump outlined her new initiatives, known as the Be Best program, as first lady during the event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 5: (AFP OUT) First Lady Melania Trump attends a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House March 5, 2018 in Washington, DC. The prime minister is on an official visit to the US until the end of the week. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 13: U.S. First Lady Melania Trump plays bowls she meets British military veterans known as "Chelsea Pensioners" at Royal Hospital Chelsea on July 13, 2018 in London, England. America's First Lady visited the Chelsea Pensioners while her husband, President Donald Trump, held bi-lateral talks with Theresa May at the Prime Minister's Country Residence. The Chelsea Pensioners are British Army personnel who are cared for at at the Services retirement home at The Royal Hospital in London. (Photo by Luca Bruno - WPA Pool/Getty Images) First lady Melania Trump arrives to board a plane at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Thursday, June 21, 2018, to travel to Texas to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Viktor Knavs and Amalija Knavs, parents of US first lady Melania Trump, arrive at the White House with the first family on June 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. US First Lady Melania Trump announces her "Be Best" children's initiative in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, May 7, 2018. (Photo by JIM WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 07: U.S. first lady Melania Trump arrives in the Rose Garden to speak at the White House May 7, 2018 in Washington, DC. Trump outlined her new initiatives, known as the Be Best program, as first lady during the event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) (CNN) — First lady Melania Trump underwent kidney surgery Monday at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington, DC, according to a statement from her office. Trump had been experiencing an issue with her kidney that her office described as benign but requiring medical attention. “This morning, first lady Melania Trump underwent an embolization procedure to treat a benign kidney condition. The procedure was successful, and there were no complications,” the first lady’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement. “Mrs. Trump is at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and will likely remain there for the duration of the week. The first lady looks forward to a full recovery so she can continue her work on behalf of children everywhere,” Grisham wrote. President Donald Trump remained in the White House during Melania Trump’s surgery. He tweeted just after 5 p.m. Monday that he was heading to hospital to visit his wife in Marine One. “Heading over to Walter Reed Medical Center to see our great First Lady, Melania. Successful procedure, she is in good spirits. Thank you to all of the well-wishers!” Trump tweeted. Trump, who turned 48 last month, had surgery at Walter Reed in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, on Monday morning. She is the first US first lady to undergo such a serious medical procedure while in the White House since Nancy Reagan had a mastectomy in October 1987. Rosalynn Carter underwent surgery to remove a benign lump from her breast in April 1977. Weeks after Betty Ford became first lady, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy in September 1974. The first lady did not move to Washington until six months into the administration, choosing to let their son, Barron, finish the 2017 school year in New York. More recently, Melania Trump has had a more public profile. On April 24, she and the President hosted the first official state dinner of the Trump administration, an event that was planned and executed primarily by the first lady. Trump was responsible for every aspect of the formal dinner in honor of French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, from the hand-selected ivory tablecloths to the menu, which the first lady designed to meld American food with French influence. During the welcome ceremony leading up to the dinner, Melania Trump stole headlines, wearing a crisp white Michael Kors Collection suit with a matching white hat, custom-made by her personal couturier. The hat set the internet ablaze, with references and comparisons to Beyoncé, the suffragette movement and even television character Olivia Pope of “Scandal.” On May 7, Trump, a relatively private first lady by comparison to her most recent predecessors, was once again front and center, this time to unveil her formal platform, Be Best. She kicked off the initiative with a Rose Garden speech lasting 11 minutes, the longest public speaking engagement during her 16-month tenure as first lady. Be Best is a three-pronged platform with a focus on opioid addiction and families, general physical and emotional well-being of children, and kindness and safety for kids using social media. The latter caused a firestorm of controversy because it encompasses cyberbullying, a tactic that Melania Trump’s husband, the President, has often been accused of fueling. In March, the first lady addressed the criticism she has faced by taking up the issue during opening remarks to a meeting she convened at the White House for tech industry leaders from Google, Snap, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and others. “I am well-aware that people are skeptical of me discussing this topic,” she said. “I have been criticized for my commitment to tackling this issue, and I know that will continue. But it will not stop me from doing what I know is right.” Melania Trump has also appeared with her husband several times in recent weeks.<doc-sep>“It’s like literally an outpatient procedure,” said Dr. Eleanor D. Lederer, a professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and past president of the American Society of Nephrology. “You go in, you have it done, you lie in bed for a while to keep the blood vessel from bleeding and then you go home.” Another doctor, however, said Mrs. Trump was probably being kept in the hospital longer because of her position. “That’s because she is the first lady,” said Dr. Jeffrey Cadeddu, a professor of urology and radiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “If it was you, you’d be in and out in a day, I promise.” Still, embolization kills some surrounding healthy kidney tissue, which causes swelling and pain as a patient recovers, so a longer stay could be helpful or necessary, doctors said. The White House did not explain what led Mrs. Trump to seek treatment or whether the “benign kidney condition” meant she had a benign tumor or something else. Specialists said it could be that doctors had been monitoring a mass for a while and decided to act on it now because it had grown. Or they said it could be that she experienced symptoms of some sort, like noticing blood in the urine or experiencing back pain or stomach pain. Doctors may also have discovered bleeding while conducting routine tests for other reasons. Dr. Joseph A. Vassalotti, the chief medical officer at the National Kidney Foundation, said his guess was that Mrs. Trump had either a benign tumor known as an angiomyolipoma or a bleeding cyst. “It sounds like it was a benign tumor,” he said. Dr. David G. Warnock, an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a past president of the kidney foundation, said doctors frequently perform an embolization if a biopsy or other diagnostic procedure causes bleeding. “My list of benign conditions that you’d embolize is pretty short,” he said. “Ninety percent of them are to stop bleeding after some procedure like a kidney biopsy.”<doc-sep>U.S. first lady Melania Trump stands with President Donald Trump after he signed the Be Best initiative in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., May 7, 2018. After spending several days in the hospital recovering from a kidney procedure, First Lady Melania Trump has been released, the White House said on Saturday. In a statement, the White House said that "The First Lady returned home to the White House this morning. She is resting comfortably and remains in high spirits." Earlier this week, Melania Trump went under kidney surgery for a condition the White House characterized as benign. The first lady tweeted on Wednesday that she was in good health, as she recovered at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. Melania tweet "Our office has received thousands of calls and emails wishing Mrs. Trump well, and we thank everyone who has taken the time to reach out," the White House said on Saturday.<doc-sep>On Sunday, the first lady's spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed that Mrs Trump would not be accompanying her husband to the G7 summit in Canada this week or the scheduled landmark North Korea nuclear summit in Singapore on 12 June.<doc-sep>
Melania Trump seen at East Room Reception Mr Trump expressed his outrage in a tweet, claiming the "Fake News Media" was "vicious" to his wife while she was recovering from surgery, declaring the US First Lady was "doing really well". His tweet read: "The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania. "During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. "All Fake, she is doing really well!" He also tweeted: "Four reporters spotted Melania in the White House last week walking merrily along to a meeting. "They never reported the sighting because it would hurt the sick narrative that she was living in a different part of the world, was really ill, or whatever. Fake News is really bad!" The First Lady has kept a low profile following her surgery on May 10 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre near Washington DC, to treat a benign kidney condition, with the surgery described as "relatively minor". Mrs Trump went through an "embolisation procedure" which her office said was "successful" with "no complications". Donald Trump hit out at news outlets for churning "fake" news about his wife, Melania Trump's health The First Lady's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement on the day of Mrs Trump's surgery: "This morning, first lady Melania Trump underwent an embolization procedure to treat a benign kidney condition. "The procedure was successful, and there were no complications. "Mrs. Trump is at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and will likely remain there for the duration of the week. "The first lady looks forward to a full recovery so she can continue her work on behalf of children everywhere." Donald Trump expressed his outrage on Twitter