Former F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen is in recovery mode now after his open heart surgery, as he provides an update on his condition.
I was diagnosed with ascending aortic aneurysm at the end of last year, basically a piece of the ascending aortic was dilating quite a lot. So that’s the reason why I haven’t been able to join any rallies or any other activities even over the winter. In the last few months, I’ve been going through with a team of doctors my options, what we’re gonna do about it, what can be done.
We decided to go ahead with the operation and I had it already last week. It’s a wonderful, wonderful team of doctors and nurses who took care of me there. It was an open heart surgery so I have marks forever now on my chest. The surgery went well, we managed to get done exactly what we were planning to do.
So we got the diseased part of the ascending aorta out and put an artificial graft in place. Everything went well, it was obviously a big operation. I was a couple of days after the operation feeling a bit rough, but things have improved a lot since then. I’m actually back at home now already recovering. The outlook is quite good.
There is an opportunity to make a full recovery and regain full fitness but of course, time will tell eventually how it all works out. But so far the estimation is quite good so I’m very pleased with that. In the meantime, just continue recovering and try to hopefully get out, little by little increase activities, the main thing is obviously for the chest bone to give it some time to heal.
And then once that is all done, if things go well hopefully get back to normal routines. And in the meantime, yeah, take care and enjoy whatever you’re doing and hopefully see you out soon.”
Here’s the video: https://x.com/H_Kovalainen/status/1776595248803610889
Here’s response from Lewis Hamilton: https://x.com/LewisHamilton/status/1776634114382413940
Here’s earlier news from Heikki Kovalainen
[Note: The story is as per press release]
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