David Letterman Undergoes Heart Surgery Following Discovery of Severe Artery Issue During Checkup

On January 14, 2000, a routine checkup revealed that an artery in David Letterman's heart was severely obstructed. He was rushed to New York Presbyterian Hospital for emergency quintuple bypass surgery. During the first weeks of his recovery, reruns of the Late Show were shown and introduced by friends of Letterman, including Norm Macdonald, Drew Barrymore, Ray Romano, Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Megan Mullally, Bill Murray, Regis Philbin, Charles Grodin, Nathan Lane, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Jerry Seinfeld, Martin Short, Steven Seagal, Hillary Clinton, Danny DeVito, Steve Martin, and Sarah Jessica Parker. Later, while still recovering from surgery, Letterman revived the late-night talk show tradition of 'guest hosts' that had virtually disappeared on network television during the 1990s, allowing Bill Cosby, Kathie Lee Gifford, Dana Carvey, Janeane Garofalo, and others to host new episodes of the Late Show. Upon his return to the show on February 21, 2000, Letterman brought all but one of the doctors and nurses on stage who had participated in his surgery and recovery, including Drs. O. Wayne Isom and Louis Aronne, who frequently appeared on the show. For a number of episodes, Letterman continued to crack jokes about his bypass, including saying: 'Bypass surgery: it's when doctors surgically create new blood flow to your heart. A bypass is what happened to me when I didn't get The Tonight Show! It's a whole different thing.' In a later running gag, he lobbied Indiana to rename the freeway circling Indianapolis (I-465) 'The David Letterman Bypass'. Letterman became friends with his doctors and nurses. In 2008, Rolling Stone wrote that he hosted a doctor and nurse who'd helped perform the emergency quintuple-bypass heart surgery that saved his life in 2000. 'These are people who were complete strangers when they opened my chest,' he says. 'And now, eight years later, they're among my best friends.' Additionally, Letterman invited the band Foo Fighters to play 'Everlong', introducing them as 'my favorite band, playing my favorite song.' During Letterman's last show, on which Foo Fighters appeared, Letterman said that Foo Fighters had been in the middle of a South American tour that they canceled to play on his comeback episode.