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Aorta Tears Rare and Deadly

Aired September 12, 2003 - 14:44   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The deaths of Johnny Cash and John Ritter both came as something of a shock this morning, especially Ritter who was just 54, seemed like he was in good health. Ritter died suddenly from a tear in his aorta. Now that's a medical disaster that unfortunately can strike without warning.
And that opens the door to all kinds of questions for our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. No symptoms that you can detect in this one?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There are symptoms that you can detect, but they can also be confused with some other things.

Let's talk about this tear in the aorta and exactly what the aorta is and how this happens. If you take a look, the aorta that long artery that goes down the body, it's the main artery that carries blood away from the heart. And what happens is that the blood will then build on the wall of that vessel, and it can actually make a tear.

And if you take a look right here, here is where the aorta is. If the rip happens near the heart, like, for example, right along here or right down here, the death rate is very, very high. It's 1 percent, per hour, for the first 48 hours. And so what that means is that at the end of those 48 hours, half the people will have died. So this is catastrophic.

One doctor said, imagine an aorta ripping, like unzipping, imagine if you could unzip an artery. That's basically what happens. It happens to every two out of every 10,000 people, which makes it a rare event. Most often to men, and they're between the ages of 40 and 70.

The cause is unknown but there are certain risks, there are certain people who should be more aware of this. If you have hardening of the artery, that puts you at a higher risk of getting this. Also high blood pressure, that's actually the most important risk factor.

Also an injury, let's say you're driving, you get into an injury, and your chest goes against a steering wheel. That kind of an injury can cause the aorta to unzip, to tear as we were just discussing.

The symptoms include sudden and very severe chest pain, confusion, rapid pulse and dizziness. There are also some other ones such as nausea. but unfortunately it can be confused with so many other things that when someone presents at the hospital, they might -- they might be thinking heart attack, they might be thinking pulmonary embolism, they might be thinking all sorts of things.

The way to diagnose it is with a CAT scan or MRI. Unfortunately that's not always the first thing that a doctor will think about doing. If caught early enough it can be treated with surgery or drugs. But unfortunately, sometimes, even those don't work.

O'BRIEN: So if -- of course, you'd be unlucky to have this in the first place. But if you're lucky enough to go to a place where they figure this out, are we talking emergency open heart surgery to try to fix the tear?

COHEN: It depend on where it is. If the tear is near the heart that means that they're probably going to go in and do surgery. they can't can sew it up. That kind of tissue can't be sewn up. But what they can do they can do a graft.

If it's further down along in your body, what they can give you drugs. And hopefully, that will do it and they won't have to open you up. When they open you up, they open you up. This is deep inside your body.

O'BRIEN: And the time frame from when this even begins is not very long, is it?

COHEN: It can be not very long. Again, if it's near your heart, 1 percent per hour for the first 48 hours. That means within the first two days of this happening, half of the people will die.

One big thing that you can do to decrease your risk, get your blood pressure down, get your cholesterol down is don't smoke. Smoking makes things much worse.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much. Elizabeth Cohen, appreciate that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired September 12, 2003 - 14:44   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The deaths of Johnny Cash and John Ritter both came as something of a shock this morning, especially Ritter who was just 54, seemed like he was in good health. Ritter died suddenly from a tear in his aorta. Now that's a medical disaster that unfortunately can strike without warning.
And that opens the door to all kinds of questions for our medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. No symptoms that you can detect in this one?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There are symptoms that you can detect, but they can also be confused with some other things.

Let's talk about this tear in the aorta and exactly what the aorta is and how this happens. If you take a look, the aorta that long artery that goes down the body, it's the main artery that carries blood away from the heart. And what happens is that the blood will then build on the wall of that vessel, and it can actually make a tear.

And if you take a look right here, here is where the aorta is. If the rip happens near the heart, like, for example, right along here or right down here, the death rate is very, very high. It's 1 percent, per hour, for the first 48 hours. And so what that means is that at the end of those 48 hours, half the people will have died. So this is catastrophic.

One doctor said, imagine an aorta ripping, like unzipping, imagine if you could unzip an artery. That's basically what happens. It happens to every two out of every 10,000 people, which makes it a rare event. Most often to men, and they're between the ages of 40 and 70.

The cause is unknown but there are certain risks, there are certain people who should be more aware of this. If you have hardening of the artery, that puts you at a higher risk of getting this. Also high blood pressure, that's actually the most important risk factor.

Also an injury, let's say you're driving, you get into an injury, and your chest goes against a steering wheel. That kind of an injury can cause the aorta to unzip, to tear as we were just discussing.

The symptoms include sudden and very severe chest pain, confusion, rapid pulse and dizziness. There are also some other ones such as nausea. but unfortunately it can be confused with so many other things that when someone presents at the hospital, they might -- they might be thinking heart attack, they might be thinking pulmonary embolism, they might be thinking all sorts of things.

The way to diagnose it is with a CAT scan or MRI. Unfortunately that's not always the first thing that a doctor will think about doing. If caught early enough it can be treated with surgery or drugs. But unfortunately, sometimes, even those don't work.

O'BRIEN: So if -- of course, you'd be unlucky to have this in the first place. But if you're lucky enough to go to a place where they figure this out, are we talking emergency open heart surgery to try to fix the tear?

COHEN: It depend on where it is. If the tear is near the heart that means that they're probably going to go in and do surgery. they can't can sew it up. That kind of tissue can't be sewn up. But what they can do they can do a graft.

If it's further down along in your body, what they can give you drugs. And hopefully, that will do it and they won't have to open you up. When they open you up, they open you up. This is deep inside your body.

O'BRIEN: And the time frame from when this even begins is not very long, is it?

COHEN: It can be not very long. Again, if it's near your heart, 1 percent per hour for the first 48 hours. That means within the first two days of this happening, half of the people will die.

One big thing that you can do to decrease your risk, get your blood pressure down, get your cholesterol down is don't smoke. Smoking makes things much worse.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much. Elizabeth Cohen, appreciate that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com