Christian Koloko went through a lengthy medical process to determine the cause of the issues that had put his NBA career on hold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After continuing to search for answers, Koloko and his family turned to Cedars-Sinai, where he was examined by Ali Azizzadeh, MD, director of the Division of Vascular Surgery at Cedars-Sinai and associate director of the Smidt Heart Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The examination revealed a significant difference between his two arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWhen we examined Christian, we found that his left arm was three centimeters bigger in diameter than his right, which suggested a narrowing of the vein,\u201d Azizzadeh explained.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A venogram subsequently revealed a major clot in the vein draining Koloko\u2019s left arm<\/strong>, allowing doctors to diagnose venous thoracic outlet syndrome<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Symptoms began during his rookie season<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Koloko began his NBA career with the Toronto Raptors, but his rookie season was soon interrupted by health issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cDuring my rookie season, I started experiencing some shortness of breath and I was getting tired much more quickly than usual. I went to see my doctors with the team because I just felt like something was wrong,\u201d Koloko said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Testing revealed a blood clot in his lungs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because doctors initially had no indication of where the clot had originated, Koloko was placed on blood thinners<\/strong>. The treatment kept him sidelined for most of the following season, as the medication could have caused severe internal bleeding if he suffered an injury on the basketball court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Cedars-Sinai<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a blood clot was discovered in his lungs, the Cameroonian center sought a second opinion at Cedars-Sinai, where doctors diagnosed venous thoracic outlet syndrome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":533628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-533630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/09\/cedars-sinai-fb.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533631,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533630\/revisions\/533631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533630"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=533630"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=533630"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=533630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}