Ritter was victim of a rare tear
A CLOSER LOOK: AORTIC DISSECTION
When John Ritter arrived at the hospital Sept. 11, 2003, he was nauseated and vomiting, and he felt a dull tightening in his chest. Doctors ordered an EKG, which proved inconclusive. But an hour or so later, Ritter's chest tightness was worse, and a second EKG was more dire. Besides, his blood pressure had gone down, his heart rate had gone up, and he seemed to be developing congestion in his lungs.
These were all signs of a man having a heart attack.
The standard of care for heart attack victims is to try to open their arteries as soon as possible, and that is what doctors did for the popular actor, treating him in the cardiac catheterization lab where they inserted an intra-aortic balloon pump.
Unfortunately, this was exactly what Ritter didn't need.
Ritter's heart attack was not typical. It was not caused by plaque blocking his arteries but by a sudden tear in the inner lining of his aorta, a very dangerous, and rare, condition known as an aortic dissection.
The aorta, leading from the heart, is the body's largest blood vessel. The lining of Ritter's aorta tore in a critical spot: The flap of loose tissue intermittently covered his left main coronary artery, interrupting the supply of blood -- and oxygen -- to the left ventricle of his heart.
What Ritter needed was emergency surgery to repair the tear.
After Ritter's death, his widow, Amy Yasbeck, and his children sued the cardiologist who treated Ritter in the emergency room that night, as well as a radiologist who had examined Ritter two years before. They contended that the cardiologist should have diagnosed Ritter's real problem and given him more appropriate treatment and that the radiologist should have found that Ritter had an enlarged aorta, which increases the risk for a dissection.
Earlier this month, the doctors were found blameless, with a jury saying they had done all they could.
That may have done little to reassure Americans afraid of suffering their own aortic dissection -- and of not being diagnosed correctly.
So, the first thing to remember is that you probably won't have an aortic dissection. Only about 10,000 Americans a year do, says Dr. Kim Eagle, a cardiology professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a director of the university's Cardiovascular Center, who testified for the defense in the Ritter case. (Heart attacks are far more common; there are 450,000 of them annually in the U.S.)
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