Emma Willis speaks out on the ‘terrifying’ moment she was diagnosed with a hole in her heart

Emma Willis has told of her shock at being diagnosed with a hole in her heart.

In April last year, the TV presenter, 48, told fans she discovered she had a hole in her heart since she was born and so had surgery at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.

Keyhole heart surgery involves making small incisions in the chest as opposed to the breastbone as in traditional open heart surgery. This meant she avoided an open-heart recovery and instead had a ‘smooth’ recovery, but has had to learn to adjust. 

‘I was floored as I had gone 48 years oblivious, not knowing anything was wrong.

‘The mental shift was the biggest challenge because when you hear those words, it terrifies you. I’m hoping sharing my story will help others going through something like this.’

Emma has become involved with a campaign by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to raise awareness of people living with heart conditions.

The BHF is unveiling 65 red benches, one for each year they have been running, across  the UK in tribute to people with cardiovascular disease.

Last summer, Emma revealed the lifelong impact of undergoing heart surgery during an appearance on ITV’s Lorraine.

Host Lorraine Kelly told her: ‘We were worried about you, obviously, the best thing you did was to put that online so you saw you were going through this heart operation, but you were okay! You didn’t even know…’

Emma said: ‘I found out in January – I’ve had it my whole life. Thank you for the kindness online.

‘I genuinely just wanted to thank the hospital, they had been so amazing and everyone that looked after me, they were great. 

‘The amount of people since said that happened to me, and I found out after having a stroke.

‘That kind of really makes you realise, actually, “oh that’s what I could have been dealing with”. So I was so lucky.’ 

Lorraine asked: ‘It was kind of a routine check-up thing wasn’t it?’

Emma explained: ‘I had um… my doctor… I’ve got really high cholesterol.’

She giggled: ‘It’s getting very into my medical history. They said “Go see a cardiologist”. 

‘I was like, “okay, I did, I had an MRI last year on my heart,” and he was like “one side of it is enlarged, and that’s not okay”.

‘And he from there went on… I’ve got a metal plug in it and its ticking still which is great.’ 

It comes after Emma revealed she has ‘terrible anxiety’ as she opened up about her ‘psychological recovery’ following the surgery.  

Emma told The Sun: ‘It’s a bit of a head scramble when you find out something like that, that you’ve had something there your whole life, and you had no idea about it.

‘I’m a brilliant overthinker, and my mind will go in every possible direction and scenario, so going into something like surgery, I really got myself at it, I get really anxious and nervous.’

‘It’s been a smooth recovery, it’s been much more of a psychological adjustment, because you don’t have a wound that you can see. The healing is all internal and you can’t feel it.