Florida native Phil Passen, father to a 9-year-old daughter, was on the operating table for hours. The 53-year-old boxer and jogger needed a new aortic valve. Like many, Passen had ignored getting routine checkups for years because of the pandemic. This nearly proved deadly.
“I went for my yearly checkup (in 2016) … and my general physician caught that I had a heart murmur, and it sounded a bit abnormal,” he told CBS News’ Kerry Breen. “She referred me for further testing, just as a precautionary thing. They didn’t find anything with a stress test, but then when they started doing the ultrasound, they discovered I had a bicuspid aortic valve.”
Normally, a human heart has three aortic valves. Passen’s, however, had only two. A “wait-and-see” period began; the Florida father now needed annual checkups with a cardiologist. After all, heart disease is the number one killer worldwide, the cause of 1 in 5 deaths in the United States in 2022.
“I kind of had to put my mind in the frame of ‘OK, this is something that needs to be monitored, and I can’t mess around with it,” he said. “So if it does get serious, I’m just going to have to not ignore the symptoms and just do what needs to be done.”
But as the COVID-19 pandemic was enveloping the world in 2020, Passen stopped going to the doctor. Whether from fear of exposure to the virus or the closure of medical offices, around 41% of all U.S. patients skipped care during the early stages of the pandemic, according to the American Medical Association.
The first year of the pandemic experienced the largest single-year increase in cardiovascular disease-related deaths since 2015: 928,741. The body count surpassed a 17-year high set in 2003. Twice as many people died of heart disease compared to COVID-19.
“COVID-19 has both direct and indirect impacts on cardiovascular health,” American Heart Association president Dr. Michelle A. Albert said in a news release. “As we learned, the virus often attacks the body’s circulatory system, causing new clotting and inflammation. We also know that many people who had new or existing heart disease and stroke symptoms were reluctant to seek medical care, particularly in the early days of the pandemic. This resulted in people needing more acute or urgent treatment for what may have been manageable chronic conditions. And, sadly, appears to have cost many their lives.”
Passen was running 25-30 miles a week and experienced none of the symptoms common to a failing bicuspid aortic valve: shortness of breath, chest pain and lightheadedness. But in April 2023, he decided to face his future by visiting a doctor.
“They said to me ‘You need immediate surgery on your heart valve.’ This was the last thing I was expecting,” Passen said. “This is like a life-altering moment, because it’s suddenly not an elective surgery, and you’re being told that you need this done, and you need it done right away. It was probably the most stressful moment of my life.”
It’s now been six months since the operation, and he’s back to enjoying his regular life. But Passen has a message for anyone else that’s skipped a doctor’s visit recently: be inspired to monitor your health.
For more information on heart disease, visit cdc.gov/heart-disease/about/index.html.
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