Film legend Arnold Schwarzenegger had an emergency open-heart operation in Los Angeles after experiencing complications during another procedure, according to a new report.
Schwarzenegger, 70, went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Thursday to have a catheter valve replaced, but doctors were forced to immediately perform open-heart surgery on the "Terminator" star when that initial operation went awry, TMZ reported. Schwarzenegger is currently in stable condition.
The emergency surgery lasted several hours. The catheter valve procedure that the actor originally went in for is relatively experimental at this point, according to the report.
A rep for Schwarzenegger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Schwarzenegger also had a heart operation in 1997 when doctors replaced an aortic valve. The actor-turned-politician opted to have the surgery then because he was young, even though doctors determined at the time that he didn't need to do it immediately.
Schwarzenegger initially kept that first heart surgery a secret from his wife, Maria Shriver, by telling her he was on vacation in Mexico.
He recalled his doctor being skeptical of that decision during an interview on "60 Minutes" in 2012.
"He said, 'Your wife is pregnant, what do you mean you are not going to tell her?'" Schwarzenegger said on the CBS newsmagazine show. "I told him, 'Here is the plan, I am going to have the heart surgery, you do it quietly, no one knows about it, we do it at six in the morning. Four days later I am out of here and I go to Mexico and I will tell Maria I am down here, a little busy and I am on vacation, when I come back I'll be tanned and no one will know.'"
Shortly after that operation, Schwarzenegger's rep told The Los Angeles Times that the surgery had nothing to do with the actor's admitted past steroid use, calling it a "congenital condition that's existed in his family."
