Wow I got the text this morning and was shocked. I didn't know it was that serious!
Now I can provide a little more information from back in the day: I was told it was a heart murmur/irregular heartbeat.
He never hid anything. This has been monitored since he was a teenager.
Can anyone in the medical field answer if a murmur/irregular beat can lead to this surgery?
He's young and should be in good hands but it's not a walk in the park.
Wishing him success, a speedy recovery, and the ability to see his daughters grow up without any physical limitations.
We'll see him at the Garden in the next 9-15 months to raise #30 to the rafters!
I posted earlier speculating on what it could be and the comments from his camp that came out about him taking only a year off were off base and threw off my guessing as to what it could be.
It seems like he has a bicuspid aortic valve. 1% of the population is born with this and it is hereditary. It can lead to aortic stenosis (narrowing of the aortic valve) and or aortic regurgitation (leaking of the aortic valve) much earlier in life than the rest of us born with a trileaflet aortic valve. A heart murmur is a sound we hear when listening to the heart and can be heard from valves that are stenotic or regurgitant among other causes as well. These usually occur in the 4th-5th decade of life in bicuspid valves. So it has happened to Henrik perhaps a little earlier than the textbook case. Bicuspid aortic valves are also associated with aortopathies which are diseases of the aorta including dilated (aka aneurysm) aortic roots (the part of the aorta just distal to the aortic valve) and the thoracic aortas (the aorta in your chest). It appears Henrik has that too based on stating that he needed a graft done. As has been stated the surgery is involved but it's not an uncommon one. At his age he will most likely get a mechanical aortic valve and be on blood thinners (coumadin) for the rest of his life. He will also get a graft to replace his aortic root and proximal ascending aorta.
The normal surveillance when this is discovered is to watch the valve with echocardiograms routinely and the aorta with echocardiograms or CTs/MRIs. His valve probably worsened over the course of his career and or his aneurysm developed/worsened to the point where surgery could no longer be delayed (there are specific criteria for surgery in these cases).
An irregular heart beat can be multiple things but is in the realm of arrhythmia and is a separate issue.