This may be a dumb question but I have been wondering...

[Janea]

Hi all-
As I read the posts it seems that alot of you have aortic anurisyms (sp?) that needed repair or replacement. Anyway, I have never heard of that before now. Is that what John Ritter died from? I thought his aorta burst or something. Is that how an aorta goes bad....first the anurisym and then it leaks or bursts?

 

[Ross]

Yes it most certainly is as have a few others. Some of us were lucky and survived it, but darn few. A portion of the aorta becomes weakened and balloons until it bursts. When that happens, it's usually instant death.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/aortic-aneurysm/DS00017

 

[PJmomrunner]

Hi Janea:

Your observation that many of us have aneurysms is spot-on! And yes, John Ritter died of an acute aortic dissection.

An aneurysm is a place in an artery that has become dilated beyond a certain size, when it hits that size, it is no longer called dilated. People with bicuspid aortic valves, because of an inherent tissue problem with their aortic valve and their ascending aorta (at least--sometimes more widespread), that causes the media (or middle of three layers) of their aorta to be too stretchy/spongey/weak, tend to have a mean aortic diameter larger than average and, in many cases, it dilates to a dangerously thin and fragile aneurysmal size or dissects (delaminate/shred/tear/burst). (Of course, one does not have to have a BAV to have an aortic aneurysm, it's just you see a lot of us here because the BAV and aneurysm often go hand-in-hand and we get 'em at 5 to 9 times the rate of people with tricuspid aortic valves.) Aneurysms are difficult to diagnose because they don't typically cause symptoms until it is usually to late (a la John Ritter). We do have several members on VR.com who were very fortunate to survive dissections.

 

[Marguerite53]

Probably more information than you would want to know, but my son is home from college for the weekend to take care of me ( xxox xxox) and he said I should start looking things up on wikipedia.org . this is a new one for me. Here are the links to aortic aneurism and aortic stenosis. I feel like I should send the continuity equation to Burair!! (papahappystar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aortic_aneurism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aortic_stenosis

Marguerite

 

[Janea]

Wow! Thanks for the explaination. So, from Reading Ross' signature, your aorta did dissect or burst and then you had the surgery to get it fixed? Geesh! Did it dissect in the hospital? How else would they have been able to get you into surgery in time? Do you remember any of it. I would expect you had no idea what was going on. Also, what is BAV?

 

[Janea]

Duh! Sorry, I saw the Cleavland Health Flight, you were obviously flown to the hospital via helicopter. Wow! So glad you made it through that ordeal. Amazing. You were meant to live!