Sarkisian had life saving heart surgery in Birmingham in 2020 per Yahoo! report

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In July 2020, during an intensive physical exam that Alabama administers annually on its football staff, physicians learned of the heart issue and sent Sarkisian into emergency surgery, where doctors put him into deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. They slowed his heart to a crawl, dropped his body temperature and then cut him open.

In an interview with Yahoo Sports last month, he spoke in depth for the first time about the situation.

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Maybe the most serious storyline lies within the chest of the visiting coach.

“He was a ticking time bomb,” Loreal said.

About 15 years ago, two years into Saban’s tenure, Alabama trainers and team doctors decided to perform a physical on Saban. This wasn’t a routine physical but a three-hour ordeal with a cacophony of diagnostic tests, ultrasounds, blood testing and doctor visits, including gastrointestinal specialists and cardiologists.

Saban recommended that his entire staff get the same treatment every year.

“These guys are in high-stressed positions, so we want to make sure they are good,” said Jeff Allen, the school’s associate athletic director for sports medicine. “We’ve picked up on a lot of things over the years with our coaches, but this one was the most serious. It wasn’t even close.”

The treadmill stress test followed by a cardiac MRI revealed Steve Sarkisian’s condition: a congenital cardiovascular anomaly, which is a broad term used for a variety of heart issues. Sarkisian’s situation involved the bicuspid aortic valve.

Most people are born with a three-flap valve, or a tricuspid valve. Sarkisian was born with a two-flap valve. About 1 percent of the population is born with a bicuspid valve. Not everyone needs surgery or even realizes they have the condition.

But the aortic valve is significant to a person’s blood flow. The valve, sitting between the heart’s two chambers, acts as a “doorway” for blood exiting the heart, says Matt Martinez, the director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey.

If the aortic valve is too narrow, blood can’t easily pass through. If it is too constricted, blood leaks back into the heart muscle, causing a swelling of the aorta, the main artery delivering blood to the body.

Sarkisian’s doorway was shut, blood was leaking into the heart and his aorta had swelled to the point of a near ruptured aneurysm.

“We don’t get nervous until the aorta gets to 5 centimeters,” Martinez said, “and 6 is a very high risk of tearing.”

Sarkisian’s aorta was at 6.5 centimeters.

“If they didn’t find it, he would have had a 5 percent chance to live,” Loreal said.

Allen remembers receiving the first call from the doctor in Birmingham who’d administered the physical.

“This is serious,” he told Allen. “It cannot wait.”

“We’re a month away from the season!” Allen told him.

“Look,” the doctor said, “I know you guys live in a different world, but some things are more important than football.”

A few days into his only vacation of the year, Banks found himself on an impromptu Zoom call with Sarkisian, then-offensive coordinator, and the other offensive coaches. He’s got a problem with his heart, he told them, needed surgery and would be out for at least a few weeks.

Four days after the diagnosis, Sarkisian underwent an intense procedure in Birmingham. Surgeons made their incision, sawed the sternum with a surgical tool and replaced his valve with one from a pig. They used a technique common with intensive heart surgeries, nearly stopping his heart and cooling his body to under 80 degrees.

“I don’t want to say he was dead, but he was almost dead,” Loreal said.

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After the procedure, doctors emerged with news that, while troubling, it was routine for such a surgery.

“They come out and say, ‘We have to let his body warm up. Like, come back to life,’” Loreal said. “That was scary. It’s like, ‘What if he doesn’t come back?’”

Recovery was trying, especially given COVID protocols. This all happened about four months into the pandemic and a week after Steve and Loreal got hitched in a small wedding ceremony. Steve spent a week in the hospital and another week at home relearning basic functionality. Thinking. Talking. Reading. Walking.

Loreal describes it as watching her husband’s brain return to life. She often wondered if he’d ever come back fully to normal activity, “not to mention that he was the play-caller for Alabama a month before camp,” she said.

He’d have heart and lung exercises, like taking deep breaths and blowing into something. She helped him walk. They’d set goals to reach: to the end of the bed, down the hallway, around the living room.

Two weeks after surgery, he began Zooming in with coaches and players during NFL-like walkthrough practices that the NCAA approved during the pandemic.

Finally, he was able to walk on his own but with a cane. Soon, he could walk without any assistance. One day, without telling Loreal, he sneaked outside to walk two miles on a July day in Alabama. He returned soaked in sweat, heaving of breath and near collapse. “I lost it!” Loreal remembered.

About three weeks after surgery, he returned to the office but couldn’t drive. Loreal chauffeured her husband every day at 5 a.m.

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Sarkisian brings his Horns into a special place for him. In his second and final year as offensive coordinator, he helped lead the Tide to a 13-0 season in 2020, ending the year with a win over Ohio State in the national championship game.

It was a remarkable run through a wacky season. Ten SEC games. COVID protocols. And Sarkisian served as interim coach for the Tide’s 42-13 clobbering of Auburn after Saban tested positive for COVID.

And don’t forget one other thing, Allen said. “The offensive coordinator has major heart surgery a month before camp!”

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