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How a 49ers mandate saved Keena Turner’s life
Turner, former Super Bowl linebacker and now GM John Lynch’s senior adviser, credits a mandatory, team-wide physical exam with catching a heart condition that required surgery.
Bay Area News Group: September 24, 2023
It was February of 2022, and a Stanford cardiologist was routinely delivering the results of an echocardiogram, the only two words of which Keena Turner remembers clearly were “aortic aneurysm.”
Sitting in an office at 49ers headquarters, Turner can chuckle about it now. “Once I got off the floor, we didn’t really talk about what the options were because there was only one option,” Turner said. “I had to have surgery, so it was just deciding on when. Having experienced no symptoms, Turner, to put it mildly, was surprised.
Hired as the 49ers’ general manager along with head coach Kyle Shanahan in 2017, Lynch immediately mandated annual physicals for everyone in the personnel department. Turner’s aneurysm showed up on a test when compared to his physical from the previous year.
Lynch borrowed the policy from the Denver Broncos, where he finished his playing career before retiring in 2008. The exams included football staff as well as players in their yearly checkups, and 49ers ownership was on board. The team flies in the same medical staff to perform the physicals each year at an undisclosed expense.
“It’s important to do these things, especially when you get up to the years where I’m at, where Keena’s at,” Lynch, 51, said. “When I stopped playing I didn’t have a physical for eight years. That’s crazy. I credit the York family for allowing us to do this.”
Turner came through the surgery just fine, and there are no physical restrictions or follow-up necessary. “John Lynch saved my life."
Turner, former Super Bowl linebacker and now GM John Lynch’s senior adviser, credits a mandatory, team-wide physical exam with catching a heart condition that required surgery.
Bay Area News Group: September 24, 2023
It was February of 2022, and a Stanford cardiologist was routinely delivering the results of an echocardiogram, the only two words of which Keena Turner remembers clearly were “aortic aneurysm.”
Sitting in an office at 49ers headquarters, Turner can chuckle about it now. “Once I got off the floor, we didn’t really talk about what the options were because there was only one option,” Turner said. “I had to have surgery, so it was just deciding on when. Having experienced no symptoms, Turner, to put it mildly, was surprised.
Hired as the 49ers’ general manager along with head coach Kyle Shanahan in 2017, Lynch immediately mandated annual physicals for everyone in the personnel department. Turner’s aneurysm showed up on a test when compared to his physical from the previous year.
Lynch borrowed the policy from the Denver Broncos, where he finished his playing career before retiring in 2008. The exams included football staff as well as players in their yearly checkups, and 49ers ownership was on board. The team flies in the same medical staff to perform the physicals each year at an undisclosed expense.
“It’s important to do these things, especially when you get up to the years where I’m at, where Keena’s at,” Lynch, 51, said. “When I stopped playing I didn’t have a physical for eight years. That’s crazy. I credit the York family for allowing us to do this.”
Turner came through the surgery just fine, and there are no physical restrictions or follow-up necessary. “John Lynch saved my life."