Mayor Pasquale Menna at a press conference in 2014. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna is scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery Thursday, he tells redbankgreen.
The operation, at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune, is to replace a congenital anomaly known as a bicuspid aortic valve, which is said to occur in less than two percent of the population, mostly men.
The condition was detected as an “unusually loud murmur” during a routine medical examination last year, and had not previously caused him any health issues, Menna said. In recent weeks, though, he said it “has slowed me down, somewhat.”
Menna said he was “trepidatious” about the surgery, “but the good thing is that it’s not an emergency procedure.”
Menna, a self-employed attorney, said he expects to be hospitalized for about four days. During his absence, Council President Art Murphy will have mayoral authority, he said.
The surgery, to be performed by Dr. David Johnson, comes less than a week after the Red Bank Mayor’s Charity Ball, a Menna initiative that he said he hopes will become an annual event on the local social calendar.
