Lisa Marie Presley, who was the only child of Elvis Presley, died at the age of 54 in January of this year.
The news of her death came two days after Lisa Marie appeared at the Golden Globes, in which her cause of sudden death was cited as a cardiac arrest. However, it was later revealed that the singer died due to the ‘obstruction of her small bowels’ as a complication of a bariatric surgery she had years ago.
Lisa Marie was just nine-years-old when the King of Rock & Roll was found unresponsive on the floor of a bathroom inside his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 16, 1977.
Elvis had suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 42.
Furthermore, Elvis’s mom, Gladys Presley, died exactly 19 years before her son at the age of just 46 and a number of her three brothers also passed away at relatively young ages from either heart or liver-related issues between the ages of 46 and 58.
Elvis historian and biographer Sally Hoedel, who researched the medical history of the Presley family for her book, Elvis: Destined to Die Young, noted that the singer’s fate was likely decided by his maternal roots.
Hoedel noted that Lisa Marie’s bariatric surgery had more to do with just weight loss. Like Elvis, Lisa Marie suffered from digestive and bowel issues for the majority of her life.
The biographer pointed out that Lisa Marie “referred to it as a ‘chronic Presley problem’ and stated that it went back to childhood for her.”
She added that since the digestive issues had been a nuisance to her since childhood, she “did not seek any medical treatment sooner.”
“There is testimony to it being a problem for Elvis as a toddler and a teen, long before fame and prescription medication. This was also true for Lisa Marie, as her own testimony attests to it being known since childhood,” she shared.
