Talk show host Larry King underwent a heart procedure on April 22 and is recovering well in the hospital, according to multiple reports.
King’s representative said that King went into cardiac arrest, according to E! News, and was merely in the hospital for an angioplasty procedure after experiencing some chest pains while preparing to leave for the hospital.
“Before his scheduled procedure, he experienced angina and went to the hospital early to be examined,” the representative said in the statement given to the news outlet. “His doctor successfully performed the angioplasty and inserted stents to reopen the previous bypass from 1987. He has been recuperating in the hospital and is scheduled to be released soon. His doctors expect him to make a full recovery.”
The statement that King’s representative gave to E! News said that despite the reports, King did not go into cardiac arrest. According to his doctors, he was scheduled to be released on April 29.
Larry King ‘ in good spirits after undergoing heart surgery last week and did NOT go into cardiac arrest after heart attack’ https://t.co/tnpHLWDfgP pic.twitter.com/7hrAIY9zEu
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) April 29, 2019
“Larry is in good spirits and thanks everyone for their concern,” the representative said in a statement about King’s health. “He’s expected to be back to work on his shows, ‘Larry King Now’ and ‘PoliticKING with Larry’ soon.”
According to Daily Mail, the cardiac episode came 32 years after his first heart attack back in 1987. The news outlet reported that the talk show host has been an advocate for heart health and checkups since his first and only heart attack. He wrote a book about his life and health back in 2004 where he documented the details of his lifestyle up to his first heart attack in the book “Taking on Heart Disease.”
“In early 1987, I was smoking three packs of Nat Sherman cigarettes a day, eating fried this-and-that, enjoying lamb chops with lots of fat because that always improves the taste, ordering banana cream or lemon meringue pie for dessert—and feeling absolutely fine,” King wrote in his book.
However, when he had his heart attack that year, that experience changed his entire lifestyle and the perspective he had on heart health.
“I had never spent much time thinking about my heart,” he wrote. “But when I did, it was always the other heart—the romantic one.”
According to the book, he wrote that not paying attention to the physical heart organ and the warnings that it may send is a theme in the pages to come.
Other Health Issues
In addition to writing a book about his heart health, he also took to his TV program, “Larry King Now,” and revealed that he had beat cancer in 2017, after keeping it secret for so long.
Exclusive: #LarryKing reveals his secret lung cancer diagnosis. https://t.co/43TtFCR5SG
— Us Weekly (@usweekly) September 13, 2017
According to an Us Magazine interview, King went for a regular checkup, but the doctors found something odd when undergoing an X-Ray procedure.
“I go for my checkup and they say, ‘Let’s do a chest X-ray,’ and the doctor said to me, ‘Something looks funny,'” he recalled of the incident. “They said the spot looked pretty small … I then did a CAT scan then a PET scan and then [the doctor] said to me, ‘you have lung cancer, but it looks very small, in the beginning stages.'”
According to the magazine, he was lucky to catch the cancer early, and was able to undergo surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on July 17, 2017.
“The doctor said to me, ‘It was malignant but you were in the first stage. If it had stayed and we didn’t find it, you would have had trouble in two or three years, but we got it and you were lucky,'” King said in an interview with the magazine.
After King had the procedure, he went back to work after only two weeks of recuperation. “They showed me my latest chest X-Ray, which is all clear,” King said. “It was fun to see where that spot was and there is no spot now. They took off 20 percent of the lung.”
In addition to heart disease, King had also had health scares in the past, ranging from his 1987 heart attack, diabetes, and prostate cancer. King undergone a bypass procedure after being diagnosed with type-2 diabetes, as well as receiving radiation treatment for his prostate cancer which did not require surgery.