Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death Saturday at age 71 following an aortic dissection has focused attention on the life-threatening condition. Details about his diagnosis and treatment are not available while a final death certificate is pending, but experts agree on both how serious it is and how suddenly it erupts after a long prelude.
One cardiothoracic surgeon had questions about the South Carolina senator’s care.
“Somebody of his stature and age surely has had access to very high-level medical care. At some point he’s had an echocardiogram of the chest to look at the heart and some imaging study of the chest. If he hadn’t had any of those studies, I’d wonder why,” Mark Peterson, the system director of aortic surgery at NYU Langone Health, told STAT in an interview. “And if he did, did he have signs of a dilated or aneurysmal aorta that was either being monitored or was missed?”
Patients who come to his aorta clinic often say they’d had an echocardiogram a few years ago that showed a dilated aorta — a predictor of dissection — or the bulging vessel wall of an aneurysm, but nobody took it seriously or told them about it.
“I’d be very curious to know if he’s had some advanced imaging study of the chest and if so, what it showed and if it showed any signs of enlargement or dilatation or aneurysm, what was the recommendation based on his medical team?” Peterson said about Graham. “It’s all speculation now.”
