Sportswriter Grant Wahl died of a rare type of aneurysm in his heart, an undetected ascending aortic aneurysm, according to his wife, Dr. Celine Grounder, who shared the details of an autopsy conducted by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
“The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death,” Grounder wrote on her husband’s Substack newsletter.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, ascending aortic aneurysms affect 1 in 10,000 people in the U.S. each year.
Wahl, 49, fell ill in the media center at Lusail Iconic Stadium in Qatar on Saturday while covering the Argentina-Netherlands match at the 2022 World Cup.
Emergency workers treated him for 30 minutes before he was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Wahl had complained during the World Cup about feeling ill, blaming his ill feelings on “three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work to do.”
“What had been a cold over the last 10 days turned into something more severe on the night of the USA-Netherlands game, and I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort,” he wrote in a Dec. 5 post.
That “new level of pressure and discomfort” in his chest was likely the initial presentation of the aneurysm, a weak spot in the blood vessel wall that, if it tears or ruptures, can cause life-threatening internal bleeding.
Those at highest risk for aortic aneurysms include smokers, those with high blood pressure or heart disease, family history and just being older – men over 60, and women over 70.
Wahl, on Dec. 5, sought treatment at the media center, and was told that he probably had bronchitis.
“They gave me a course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty cough syrup, and I’m already feeling a bit better just a few hours later. But still: No bueno,” he wrote in the Dec. 5 blog post.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, aortic aneurysms are hard to diagnose, and are often detected by chance during an exam for another health condition.
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Chris Graham
