Joan Rivers: What We Know So Far About Yorkville Endoscopy and Rivers’ Death
Published at(NEW YORK) — When Joan Rivers died Thursday after spending a week in the hospital following a cardiac arrest, attention turned to what procedure she was having done at a local New York City clinic and what the circumstances were surrounding her death.
The New York State Health Department told ABC News that it has opened a “full investigation” into Yorkville Endoscopy Center. As of now, there is no suspicion of wrongdoing and the investigation is routine, a source briefed on the case told ABC News.
Here’s the information that ABC News has gathered after talking to a variety of sources close to the comedian:
- Rivers was undergoing what close friend Deborah Norville described as “a diagnostic procedure … [to] see why her voice had gotten raspy.”
- The call to 911 from Yorkville Endoscopy came at 9:39 a.m. By 9:46 a.m., paramedics and other first responders were on scene. Rivers arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital at 10:08 a.m. She was already on life support and her condition at the time we are told was near death.
- Norville added that Rivers had been in a “medically induced coma” for the past week.
- According to a source briefed on the case: Rivers was under general anesthesia when she went into cardiac arrest at Yorkville Endoscopy on the Upper East Side.
- According to a Yorkville Endoscopy spokesperson, the clinic “as a federally and state licensed facility, has the same level of life-saving and resuscitation devices (such as state-of-the-art cardiac defibrillators, airway management equipment, etc.) found in any hospital emergency room or hospital-based operating room.”
- The Yorkville spokesperson adds, “Yorkville Endoscopy has performed 18,000 procedures since it opened in February 2013. Yorkville Endoscopy has maintained an exceptional safety record that far exceeds the national average.”
- The New York City Chief Medical Examiner’s Office said the autopsy is complete but will not release results, pending the outcome of further testing.
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