[I'm an MD...give me some slack here...] An aneurysm is just a dilated portion of an artery. Yes, they are very serious and can be a cause of sudden death when you have one in your brain, when they rupture and bleed. Even in the brain, though, today especially, many patients with aneurysms are successfully treated or cured. The same thing applies to aneurysms of the aorta, either in your chest or abdomen – serious, life threatening, but treatable.

An aneurysm in a blood vessel in your shoulder, arm, leg, etc., especially in an athlete, is not nearly as serious an issue as in the other sites. First of all, in athletes, these are traumatic aneurysms, meaning they are caused by the strain of the athletic activity. So they are indicative only of strain, not of, say, atherosclerosis, like you have in aortic aneurysms. Second, while a ruptured aneurysm in the brain or in the thoracic or abdominal aorta is life threatening, even if someone like Kennedy or Cone were to bleed from the aneurysm, it wouldn’t be life threatening, nor would it likely pose any serious risk to the limb.

Now, you can’t minimize these things…obviously an aneurysm requires repair, and could threaten the player’s career. But most of the time, they are treatable conditions.

http://www.baseball-reference......;year=1996

Tough break for Ian, I’ve always been a fan of his and hope he gets better soon.