February 28, 2008
Heart of the Matter
Mark DeRosa undergoes heart surgery today:
Cubs second baseman Mark DeRosa is scheduled to undergo surgery this morning to correct the heart arrhythmia that sent him to a Mesa hospital over the weekend. And barring a setback, the club expects he'll be ready to take batting practice as soon as Monday and be ready for games by the end of next week.
The outpatient procedure is called radio frequency catheter ablation (RFCA), in which an electrode catheter is used to destroy a very small area of heart tissue that caused the irregular heartbeat.
According to team doctor Stephen Adams, who spoke to media Wednesday at the request of DeRosa, cardiologists begin the process with an electrophysiology study (EPS), using a catheter-based system to induce atrial arrhythmia so they can identify the trouble spot. At that point the RFCA is performed, and another EPS is done to confirm the problem has been corrected.
The entire process should take one to two hours, Adams said. The success rate is about 98 percent.
I find it amazing that a person can undergo heart surgery and be back on the job in less than a week. It probably wasn't that long ago that DeRosa's career would be over.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:25 AM
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re: mark derosa
I still remember him playing football at penn and winning the ivy league title.
what a ballplayer he was--football and baseball double sports in college, i think he also was a wharton grad.
a penn athletic legend.
here's hoping he recovers well.
i did my grad work at penn and as a philly guy, love penn athletics.
--art kyriazis, philly