Williams Expected to Make Full Recovery from Heart Surgery

According to cardiothoracic surgeons, comedian Robin Williams is expected to emerge safely from his upcoming heart surgery, ABC News is reporting. Although Williams has battled drug and alcohol addictions and has a history of heart failure in his family, doctors predict that the operation to replace the actor's aortic valve will go smoothly since the procedure is now fairly common, even in patients as relatively young as Williams.

"In someone who is healthy, despite being in their late 50s, there is a very low operative risk of failure, death or complications," Dr. Timothy Gardener, president of the American Heart Association, tells ABC.

Statistics provided by the American Heart Association indicate that surgeons in the United States performed 17,592 aortic valve procedures in 2007. On average, patients only spend eight days in the hospital to recuperate after surgery, suggesting that Williams could feasibly fulfill his commitment to return to his stand-up tour, "Weapons of Self-Destruction," after recovering from what the actor is describing as his "little tune-up."