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Dr Larry Creswell

Dr. Larry Creswell on athletes and heart health.
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Jeff Green, NBA Basketball Player, 1986-

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Jeffrey Green is a forward for the NBA Boston Celtics basketball team.  After a college career at Georgetown he was one of the top draft picks in 2007, playing first for Seattle and later returning to the Celtics for the 2010-2011 season.

As part of a physical examination related to his contract for the 2011-2012 season, he was found to have an aortic root aneurysm.  He underwent a valve-sparing aortic root replacement operation with a Dacron graft on January 9, 2012.

We’ve talked previously here at the blog about aortic root aneurysm, or enlargement of the aorta just as it exits the heart.  There have been discrepancies in the media coverage of the details of Green’s situation, but aortic root aneurysm can develop in individuals with bicuspid aortic valve or Marfan’s syndrome.  A handful of other NBA players, including Green’s Celtics’ teammate, Chris Wilcox, have had similar operations.  I’ve also written about triathlete, Normann Stadler, who had a similar but urgent operation when a large aortic root aneurysm was discovered unexpectedly.

Green made a very quick recovery from operation, returning to dedicated rehab in March and returning to basketball by summer.  He signed a new 4-year contract with the Celtics in August and had an outstanding 2012-2013 season.

 

Reggie Lewis, NBA player, 1965-1993

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Reggie Lewis, a superstar NBA player with the Boston Celtics, died at the age of 27 on July 27, 1993. He collapsed suddenly during an off-season practice at Brandeis University and received bystander CPR, but was pronounced dead at a local hospital a couple hours later. The cause of his death was attributed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition characterized by hypertrophy (enlargement) of the heart walls and a susceptibility to potentially lethal arrhythmias (abnormal heartbeat).
There’s an interesting twist to Lewis’s story, though. It turns out that 3 months earlier, he passed out during an NBA playoff game against the Charlotte Hornets on April 29, 1993. He was evaluated by a prominent group of cardiologists at the New England Baptist Hospital and was diagnosed with HCM. Those doctors admitted that there was often some difficulty in distinguishing HCM from the “athlete’s heart syndrome,” the normal enlargement of the heart due to cardiovascular training, but they recommended that Lewis no longer play basketball.
Lewis sought additional opinions, first from physicians at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston and later at UCLA. The cardiologists at Brigham & Women’s Hospital felt that Lewis did not have HCM, but rather had collapsed from a relatively harmless condition known as neurogenic syncope. The doctors at UCLA weren’t able to reach a definitive diagnosis.
We can understand why any professional athlete would be conflicted with the recommendation that he no longer play, but as we know now, the result was tragic.
This story illustrates the common scenario of sudden death in athletes who, unknowingly, have HCM….and illustrates the common problem that HCM can be difficult to distinguish from “athlete’s heart syndrome.”