Comedian Joan Rivers’s death last week after going into cardiac arrest during an outpatient procedure on her vocal cords a week earlier at a New York medical clinic has raised questions. The New York State Health Department is investigating whether the facility followed proper procedures, but cardiac arrest during surgery is rare, said Dr. Benjamin Scirica, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Surgeons and anesthesiologists spend a lot of time before these procedures to identify any medical history, sign, or symptom that could put a patient at risk for cardiac arrest,” he said.
Safer sedation drugs and closer cardiac monitoring have also lowered the risk of heart complications in recent years.
“Situations are far more controlled than in the past,” said anesthesiologist Dr. Emery Brown, director of the neuroscience statistic research lab at Mass General Hospital.
Rivers’s age, 81, might have contributed to her risk, however, because advanced age is one of the strongest predictors of having a serious complication while under anesthesia, Scirica said. It wasn’t known whether Rivers had underlying heart disease, which would have also increased her risk of cardiac arrest — nor did her doctors disclose as of last week how long her brain was deprived of oxygen before she was resuscitated.
SOURCE: The Boston Globe