Patient Spotlight: Baseball Executive Gets Major League Care

In the middle of the night, Howard Grosswirth, an executive with the New York Yankees, arrived at the emergency department of St. Joseph’s Hospital-North complaining of severe chest pains. He was quickly diagnosed with an Aortic Dissection, a tear in the inner lining of the aorta, and was airlifted to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Howard underwent a complex, eight-hour open heart surgery, starting with a procedure to completely replace his ascending aorta with a hemashield vessel graft followed by an aortic valve replacement. In less than two months, Howard was back in the game thanks to the major league care provided at St. Joe’s.