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Long history of high blood pressure cited as the cause of Stargell's death
Tuesday, April 10, 2001 By Anita Srikameswaran, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
A disease doctors call the silent killer was ultimately responsible for the death of baseball great Willie Stargell.
Early yesterday, Stargell suffered a stroke in his brain stem. Years of high blood pressure, also called hypertension, had weakened the blood vessels in his brain.
"Those blood vessels eventually will rupture," causing a stroke, said his physician, Dr. James McCabe, a kidney specialist at New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, N.C.
Stargell entered the hospital on Feb. 23 to have his gallbladder removed. His health deteriorated in the aftermath of the operation.
High blood pressure did not play a role in his gallbladder disease, but it did cause the heart and kidney problems Stargell had long experienced.
Since 1996, he had been getting dialysis treatments three times a week because his kidneys could no longer keep his blood free of toxins.
Doctors divide hypertension into two broad categories: essential and secondary.
Secondary hypertension can be triggered by a multitude of problems, including kidney disease and some medications.
But 90 percent of patients, like Stargell, have essential hypertension, meaning doctors don't know what causes it, according to the American Heart Association.
Stargell had essential hypertension from a young age, McCabe said. Heart problems were the first complications he experienced.
When the heart has to pump out blood against high pressure, its muscular walls enlarge. Eventually, it can't get any bigger and stronger to push blood out into the body, so fluid can start building up in the lungs and kidneys.
The pounding force of blood can damage nephrons, the complex components of the kidneys that filter toxins from the blood. Scarring can occur that makes the damage irreversible. Dialysis, a procedure in which blood is rerouted through a machine for cleansing, must be regularly performed instead.
McCabe said that more than two years ago, hypertension led to damage of the blood supply to Stargell's bowel, and so part of the organ was removed in an operation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The surgery was made more risky by Stargell's fragile health.
"He came very close to not surviving that hospital stay," McCabe said. "To this day, I consider it a miracle that he survived."
After that, Stargell decided to continue his medical care in Wilmington, close to his family.
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