Before Woods, the chances may have been nonexistent. Wellington Hsu, a professor of orthopedic surgery and neurological surgery at Northwestern University, has studied athlete recovery from spinal fusion surgeries. For golfers, he pegged the successful return after spinal fusion surgery as a “0 percent success rate.” Hsu has seen players return to the NBA, NHL and NFL with few problems. He used PGA Tour pro Dudley Hart as a case study for golf.

The long-distance runner from Chicago, who will attempt to become the first Illinois competitor to finish 40 straight Boston Marathons on Monday, had a question about a third option. “Do you have any cheetah valves?’’ Buciak asked Patrick McCarthy, Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s chief of cardiac surgery. “Because I’d really like to come out of this running faster.’’ Buciak sat in McCarthy’s office 13 years ago, a healthy 45-year-old man who got the shock of his life after a routine physical.

What’s causing all this runny-nosed distress? “Climate change is making allergies worse,” Amiinah Y. Kung, MD, an allergy and immunology specialist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, told POPSUGARin a recent piece by Emily Shiffer on seasonal allergies. “Winters aren’t as cold, so there isn’t much of a freeze, and with seasonal warming beginning earlier, it makes Spring particularly bad.”

The ACR’s statement also pointed out that the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and the Society of Breast Imaging all call for average-risk women to begin getting mammograms at age 40. “What’s frustrating for us is these guidelines further muddy the waters and likely will have an effect on patients not getting screened when they should be,” Sarah Friedewald, M.D., chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine, told NBC Chicago.

If one of these valves gets smaller, blood can’t continue to flow without the heart working extremely hard, Otto told AHA News. And if a valve leaks, the heart has to pump extra blood to make up for it. Dr. Robert Bonow is professor of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and co-author of those AHA guidelines. He said, “It’s a very delicate structure that with time can become a little bit thicker and get a little bit of scar tissue.” Risk factors are similar to those that lead to heart attacks, including high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes, Bonow told AHA News. “But even people who have no risk factors, including athletes, can develop problems,” he said.

Her doctor, Northwestern Memorial Hospital cardiologist Kambiz Ghafourian, said that while Robinson suffered from a number of complications and underwent some serious procedures, including spending time on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, the fact that she survived and is doing well is a testament to how far transplant surgery has come. “Her story had some unique features because she had a unique form of heart trouble called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which has unique features and made her severely limited,” Ghafourian said.