WASHINGTON, June 13 -- Tim Russert, 58, host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and the network's Washington bureau chief, collapsed and died at his office today.
NBC broke into its regular programming at 3:39 p.m. and Tom Brokaw, a former anchor of NBC Nightly News, announced Russert's death.
Brokaw said Russert had just returned from a trip to Italy with his family. No cause of death was given, but there has been speculation that the cause was sudden cardiac death.
A statement from Russert's physician, internist Michael Newman, M.D., indicated that resuscitation was begun on the scene and was continued unsuccessfully by paramedics and at Sibley Memorial Hospital. The cause of death is unknown, he said, and an autopsy will be performed.
Douglas Zipes, M.D., of the Krannert Institute of Cardiology at Indiana University, said he could not comment specifically on the Russert case, but he speculated that the most likely cause was ventricular fibrillation, which is a shockable rhythm.
If that were the case, an automated external defibrillator (AED) could have been a life-saver.
Dr. Newman indicated in an interview on Monday with Larry King that NBC had an AED in its newsroom, but it was not immediately used. He said the NBC staff was "preparing to use [the AED]. At the same moment, the D.C. emergency medical squad arrived, and they immediately defibrillated Tim. He had no heart rhythm. They defibrillated him. His heart was beating then in a ventricular -- fine ventricular fib, and then it deteriorated. They shocked him again. Actually, he was defibrillated three times before his arrival at Sibley Memorial Hospital."
Dr. Zipes, who is a spokesperson for the American College of Cardiology, said that Russert had a classic profile for ventricular fibrillation: "male, age 58, slightly, but not terribly overweight."
Stress is also considered a risk factor, but Dr. Zipes said it would be difficult for an outsider to gauge Russert's stress level. "One man's stress is another man's dessert," he said.
The take-home message, said Dr. Zipes, is that "AEDs should be as common as fire extinguishers."
And, although Dr. Zipes said the most probable explanation was sudden cardiac death, he noted that another possibility was pulmonary embolism. Russert had just completed a long plane trip -- a risk factor for deep vein thrombosis.
According to the American Heart Association about 310,000 people a year die of coronary heart disease without being hospitalized or admitted to an emergency room. That's about half of all deaths from CHD -- about 850 Americans each day. Most of these are sudden deaths caused by cardiac arrest.
Brokaw, who called Russert "our beloved colleague," said Russert considered his work in this presidential election year to be one of the most important assignments of his career. Russert anchored the network's political coverage and, Brokaw said, "worked to the point of exhaustion."
Russert grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and maintained close ties to that blue-collar city. Brokaw said Russert had just moved his father, in his late 80s, from one long-term care facility in the city to another. The elder Russert was the subject of his son's best-seller, Big Russ and Me: Father and Son--Lessons of Life.