Heart Condition

A Reisterstown man was fired from his management job at a South Carroll beverage distributorship five years before he expected to retire because he told his boss he needed heart surgery, a suit filed in Circuit Court says.In the wrongful-termination lawsuit, Robert De Paola claims that in 1991 he was removed from his $40,000-a-year job asdraught-goods sales manager at Bees Distributing Co. Inc. in Finksburg two days after telling company president Charles Richard BroderickIII that he was to undergo major heart surgery.

Former Baltimore Colts great Art Donovan was hospitalized yesterday after complaining of chest pains, but was expected to be released today, Channel 13 reported.Donovan did not suffer a heart attack, but was admitted for observation and listed in stable condition at Saint Joseph Hospital. The ex-lineman said last night that he felt fine and hoped to supervise construction of a pool at his Baltimore County home today.Donovan has previously been hospitalized with a heart condition.

W. Washington player dies of heart failureDuke Wallenborn, leading scorer for the Western Washington University basketball team, died yesterday of heart failure, officials said.Wallenborn, 23, had a heart condition and his death was caused by an abnormal heart rhythm, said Dr. Robert Rood, Whatcom County (Washington) medical examiner.The athlete and his parents were aware of his heart condition and a cardiologist had cleared him to play basketball, a university spokesman said.College basketballA day before Jerry Tarkanian's last game at Nevada-Las Vegas, the coach called for an independent investigation of the program.

Doctors said yesterday that President Bush suffered common irregularity of the heart that, given his history of vigor and good health, probably does not signal a life-threatening illness or a condition that will force him to slow his pace.Experts in heart disease cautioned that the condition, known as atrial fibrillation, is common in people with a serious underlying heart disorder such as a leaky heart valve.But they said that when it strikes people like the president, who keep an active pace and have never reported chest pains or other symptoms of a serious abnormality, it usually is a relatively harmless condition that can be managed effectively with drugs.