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How did Lisa Marie Presley die?
Lisa Marie Presley
February 1, 1968 — January 12, 2023
Calabasas, California
Lisa Marie Presley died on January 12, 2023 in Calabasas, California, aged 54. The official cause of death was sequelae of small bowel obstruction; natural.. Readers have raised 2 theories about how it happened.
Lisa Marie Presley was born in Memphis nine months to the day after her parents married, grew up at Graceland, and was nine when her father died there. She inherited the house and the name and spent fifty-four years being asked about both. She was fifty-four when she collapsed at her home in Calabasas, two days after walking the Golden Globes red carpet looking, people said afterward, unwell.
She made three albums that were better than the reviews allowed, married Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage, and had four children: Riley Keough, Benjamin Keough, and twin daughters, Harper and Finley. Benjamin died in 2020, at twenty-seven, and she wrote afterward that grief "does not stop or go away in any sense, a year, or years after the loss," and that she had kept his body at home for two months because she could not let it go. She wrote the essay for National Grief Awareness Day, five months before she died.
She is buried at Graceland, beside her son, near her father.
Photos with Lisa
If you met her, this is where that photo goes. No one has added one yet.
The record
What is established, from the authorities and the people who were there.
Official cause: Sequelae of small bowel obstruction; natural. (Los Angeles County coroner, July 2023)
On the morning of January 12, 2023, her housekeeper found her unresponsive in her bedroom in Calabasas. Her ex-husband Danny Keough, who lived with her, performed CPR until paramedics arrived. She was taken to West Hills Hospital, where she died that afternoon. She was 54. Her mother, Priscilla, announced the death.
In July 2023 the Los Angeles County coroner reported that she died of a small bowel obstruction: a blockage of the intestine caused by scar tissue (adhesions) that had formed after bariatric weight-loss surgery she had undergone years earlier. The manner was natural. The report noted she had complained of abdominal pain and nausea the morning she died, had a slightly raised temperature, and had therapeutic levels of oxycodone and other prescription medications in her system; it did not attribute the death to them.
The coroner's account described a condition that is a known long-term complication of that surgery and that is survivable with emergency treatment if it is recognized in time.
What happened
The cause of death has been confirmed. The theories below are how readers understand it, and what people thought before it was known. Everyone here is anonymous.
She died of a bowel obstruction from scar tissue left by weight-loss surgery years before, the coroner said. She had pain and nausea that morning. Why wasn't it caught, and what else was going on in a body that had been through what hers had?
The page creator
- Confirmed45 of 49 readers find this likely
A bowel obstruction from surgical scar tissue, unrecognized until it was too late
The coroner's finding. Years after bariatric surgery, an adhesion caught a loop of bowel. She felt sick that morning and did what most people do: waited to see if it passed. By the time she collapsed, the bowel had been compromised for hours and her body was in shock. It is one of the most common ways an abdominal emergency kills, and almost all of those deaths are people who didn't know it was an emergency.
Anonymous. Says they are a general surgeon.
Confirmed by the Los Angeles County coroner, July 2023.
- Also raised32 of 41 readers find this likely
Pain medication hid the warning signs
Opioids do two things that matter here: they dull abdominal pain, and they slow the gut. Someone on a prescribed dose might feel a dangerous obstruction as an ordinary bad morning. The coroner found the drugs at therapeutic levels and did not blame them; this isn't a different cause, it's a reason the cause went unnoticed.
Anonymous. Says they are an ER nurse.
- Also raised30 of 40 readers find this likely
Grief, and a body that had stopped fighting
She had written, months earlier, about living inside the death of her son and about not sleeping. People who read that essay and then read the coroner's report see a woman who was unwell for a long time and did not, that morning, have the reserves or the will to treat herself as an emergency. Not medicine; the thing around the medicine.
Anonymous.
The confirmed cause carries this mark and stays at the top. Theories can still be added; they sort below it.
A small bowel obstruction is a blockage of the intestine. Adhesions, bands of scar tissue that form inside the abdomen after any surgery, are its most common cause; a loop of bowel catches on one and twists or kinks. The symptoms are cramping pain, nausea, vomiting, and bloating. Untreated, the trapped section loses its blood supply, dies, and the body goes into sepsis and shock. "Sequelae" means these downstream consequences, which are what actually kill.
It is treatable with surgery and often with much less, if a person gets to an emergency room. The early symptoms look like a stomach bug, and people who have lived with chronic pain, or who are used to feeling unwell, are the ones most likely to wait. The medications in her system were at prescribed levels; the coroner did not consider them a cause, though opioids can mask abdominal pain and slow the bowel.
Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner, report released July 13, 2023 Lisa Marie Presley, essay for National Grief Awareness Day, People, August 2022 Wikipedia, "Lisa Marie Presley"
Questions people ask
- What was Lisa Marie Presley's cause of death?
- The official cause of death was sequelae of small bowel obstruction; natural..
- When did Lisa Marie Presley die?
- Lisa died on January 12, 2023, at the age of 54, in Calabasas, California.
- What happened to Lisa Marie Presley?
- 3 theories have been raised on this page and ranked by readers. The cause is settled; the theories are about understanding how it happened.
- Who else died in 2023?
- See everyone on Ohbit who died in 2023. Lisa was 54.
Add a theory
Say what you think happened and why. You’re anonymous. If you have a reason to know (you were there, you do this for a living), you can say so.