Conductor's Mystery Swelling Traced to Rare Heart Condition
After COVID-19 left John Mauceri gaining a pound a day, doctors found his heart trapped in scar tissue and had to operate to find out why.
Conductor John Mauceri, then 78, contracted COVID-19 in December 2023 and developed viral pneumonia and severe lung disease, according to NYU Langone. Doctors drained three liters of fluid from his left lung, and he left the hospital about a week later.
Within weeks, new symptoms appeared. His left ankle swelled, then the swelling spread up his leg, into his abdomen and down his right leg. At one point he was gaining a pound a day, along with fatigue and shortness of breath severe enough that he could no longer conduct.
"I was wearing somebody else's body, at least from my waist down," Mauceri said. "I couldn't wear normal clothes. Putting shoes on was hard. I couldn't walk through my house."
His team of specialists — an oncologist, a pulmonologist and a rheumatologist among them — could not pinpoint a cause. Tests ruled out lymphatic problems, heart disease, blood clots and cancer recurrence. Dr. Adam Skolnick, a cardiologist at NYU Langone, began to suspect pericardial constriction, a rare condition in which the sac around the heart thickens with scarring, often after an illness like COVID-19, and prevents the heart from fully opening.
Because no test can examine the pericardium directly, Mauceri needed open-heart surgery both to confirm the diagnosis and to treat it. He underwent the operation in June 2024.
Dr. Eugene Grossi, the cardiothoracic surgeon who performed the procedure, said he found Mauceri's heart "trapped" inside pericardial tissue that had turned from a normal paper-bag consistency to something like shoe leather. The surgical team carefully scraped the scarring off the heart in a procedure called a pericardiectomy — "like the heart is a hard-boiled egg, and we're peeling off the shell," Grossi said. Once the pericardium was removed, Mauceri's urine output began to increase, confirming the pressure had been relieved.
Mauceri was later hospitalized again for an intestinal blockage, which slowed his recovery, and he did not conduct an orchestra again until December 2024. Since then he has performed in London, Paris and Tokyo and plans to conduct at the Hollywood Bowl in October, shortly after turning 80.
"Every day is a miracle," Mauceri said. "Every day I'm grateful for what they did."
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI), in accordance with our editorial policy.
