‘It”s just the way my heart is’
Gonzaga University officials insist they had no reason to suspect former Bulldogs men’s basketball player Ronny Turiaf had any kind of a heart problem, let alone one as serious as was diagnosed earlier this week.
“There may be some out there who say we knew about it all along and just played him anyway,” GU athletic director Mike Roth said Friday, less than 24 hours after it was learned that Turiaf will need open-heart surgery to repair an enlarged aortic root.
“Of course, that would be the furthest thing from the truth,” Roth added, “because if we’d have had any inkling about anything going on even close to this, we’d have had him undergo every known test available. And if this condition had shown up as a result of those tests, Ronny would have been watching from the sidelines in a suit.”
Instead, Turiaf played in 127 games in his four years at Gonzaga, scoring 1,723 points and pulling down 859 rebounds. The 6-foot-10, 245-pound native of Le Robert, Martinique, led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament every year he was with the team and seemed well on his way to realizing his dream of playing basketball at the highest level when the Los Angeles Lakers selected him in the second round of this year’s NBA draft.
But it was announced Thursday that the two-year, $1 million contract Turiaf signed with the Lakers just last week had been voided because of his potentially fatal heart condition. The enlarged aortic root was first discovered by the Lakers’ team doctor and confirmed by three other independent experts who all agreed surgery was needed.
Lakers officials said they plan to pay for the surgery, which will be performed within the next six weeks, but added there is a chance Turiaf’s competitive basketball career is over, particularly if he needs to have a heart valve replaced.
Roth said the seriousness of Turiaf’s heart condition “shocked” the Gonzaga University campus.
“I mean, who’s more healthy looking and vibrant than Ronny Turiaf?” he asked. “Anytime Ronny fell on the floor, you wondered if he was going to get up, but it wasn’t because of his heart. It was because of his bad ankles. That’s what we were holding our breath for.”
According to Steve DeLong, GU’s director of athletic medicine, every student athlete at the university is required to undergo an annual physical examination before being cleared to compete. In cases where a personal physician performs the exam, the physician must fill out and sign a form supplied by the university.
DeLong said there was nothing noted in Turiaf’s past that would have suggested a serious heart condition.
“The only way the Lakers found it was they took an MRI of his heart,” DeLong said. “If we had tons of money where we could go and do that – regardless of symptoms – with every student athlete, it might not be a bad idea.
“But at $2,000 or something like that for each test, it’s not going to happen. Plus, your insurance company is not going to be real happy.”
One local cardiologist, who asked that his name not be used, said a condition like Turiaf’s is difficult to detect.
“Basically, an echocardiogram would be the first definitive test to screen for it,” he explained. “But an adequate screening test would cost at least $1,000, I would think. So the fact that colleges aren’t doing echoes doesn’t surprise me. I wouldn’t expect them to, without any advance symptoms.”
Turiaf, who met with the media in Los Angeles on Friday morning, said he was surprised by the diagnosis of his condition.
“I never noticed any discomfort,” he said. “That’s why I’m so bothered by it. I don’t feel tired. I have energy. It’s just the way my heart is.”
According to the local cardiologist, two things could have happened to Turiaf had his condition not been diagnosed. His aorta might have eventually ruptured, or its inner layer could have ripped, allowing blood to seep between the two layers of the artery, from where it could have moved and compressed other vital arteries leading to the heart and brain.
Both cases, he explained, could have led to death.
Repairing the damage involves either a heart valve replacement or the insertion of a synthetic conduit inside the enlarged aortic root to strengthen it.
The cardiologist contacted by The Spokesman-Review said he was surprised that earlier stories out of Los Angeles suggested a valve replacement would likely bring an end to Turiaf’s career.
“I know the prognosis is better if they don’t have to replace the valve,” he said, explaining that the life-long use of blood-thinning medicine is required in such cases, putting the patient at risk of intracerebral hemorrhaging. “But I’d be more worried about the patient skiing than playing basketball.”
Roth said that in a couple of past instances, Gonzaga has not allowed student athletes to compete because of what the university perceived to be serious medical conditions.
Roth said he thought Turiaf had last been examined by one of several local physicians who work with Gonzaga’s student athletes but said he could not disclose the name of the physician or the results of the exam because of privacy laws.
“We have a number of doctors we’ve worked with for years, and they all do a wonderful job,” Roth said. “This is certainly not a reflection on them in any way, shape or form. I’m confident with our procedures because we’ve caught things in the past, abnormalities, and dealt with them.”
Roth added, however, that the university, in the aftermath of Turiaf’s diagnosis, is already reviewing those procedures.
“There’s no reason not to,” he said. “I can sit here today and say I’m completely confident in everything we do – which I am. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t review what we do and see if there might be something more we should be doing that we’re not.
“Still, in the case of any future student athletes presenting themselves as Ronny did – no obvious symptoms or anything like that – I’m not sure we’d ever find what the NBA did.”