Top News

Former Wales rugby international Rhys Thomas, 43, is recovering from a heart transplant in South Africa, 14 years after he was left fighting for his life following a dramatic collapse. The seven-times capped prop forward suffered a heart attack during a Scarlets training session at the age of just 29 in January, 2012.

Thomas underwent a quadruple bypass after the shocking incident, with surgeons battling for seven hours to save his life. It was the second heart attack he had endured during his playing career, coming six years after he sustained a mild attack following a match for his former club Newport Gwent Dragons.

Only the swift intervention of medical staff at Parc y Scarlets and specialists at Swansea's Morriston Hospital, who carried out a quadruple heart bypass, managed to save him.

Thomas lost over 50 per cent of his heart muscle as a result of the surgery and was informed he required an emergency heart transplant. However, due to pulmonary hypertension, doctors declared his heart "un-transplantable".

Two years after the gruelling surgery, in 2014, Thomas was told the damage to his heart was so severe that he required a further operation to fit a left ventricular assist device (LVAD). This mechanical pump draws blood from the lower chamber of the heart and assists in pumping it to the body and vital organs, much as a healthy heart would.

The machine was attached to his heart and wired through his stomach, and it is this device that has kept him alive for the past 12 years. The procedure to install it, at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was riddled with peril and performed by three prominent heart surgeons. At one stage, surgeons feared the dad-of-four might not survive.

EXPRESS SPORT ON FB! Get all the best sports news and much more on our Facebook page

But he did, and following weeks in intensive care, Thomas was being sustained by a battery-powered device that he transported in a man-bag. At night, it would be connected to the electricity mains at home.

The apparatus was only ever intended to be a short-term solution, to boost his prospects of receiving a heart transplant by extending the window of time he had to locate a donor. Before Thomas, the longest anyone had ever lived with a LVAD in the UK is 11 years.

By 2020, the device was not functioning as effectively as it had been, and so Thomas recognised he may require this heart transplant earlier than he had expected.

Thomas said: "Doctors in the UK told me that I was not going to be eligible for a replacement LVAD machine due to the poor state of my heart - I had a large amount of scar tissue from the two previous operations.

"Because of the way the transplant system works in the UK, to have been put on the urgent list I would have needed to get a severe infection in my wire (drive line) that goes into my stomach or my machine would need to stop. In both of these cases, the chance of survival would reduce massively even before making it onto the urgent list.

"Given that I had no reasonable prospect of having a transplant in the UK, I was forced to look for other alternatives. This was when I decided South Africa, where I was born, would be where I would buy onto a donor list."

In September 2024, Rhys and his now-fiancee, Keziah Green, headed to Cape Town to await the call about his surgery date. On April 22 of this year, that day finally arrived and Rhys underwent his heart transplant.

Since the operation, Thomas, who is now a grandad with a new baby of his own on the way, has described an "immense feeling of gratitude unlike anything he has experienced before".

He said: "I cannot describe how I feel. As if I am in a dream. Perhaps a level of gratitude I've not ascended to before. I feel close to the divine.

"I was the best prepared for my operation I could have possibly have been. Full trust. Complete surrender to any outcome."

Thomas has acknowledged that his heart complications were rooted in alcohol abuse, and has spoken candidly over the years about his battle with alcoholism. He once admitted that he would deliberately miss drug testing appointments with the World Anti Doping Agency in order to avoid detection.

Thomas earned his first Wales cap in Argentina in 2006, featured in the victory over Italy during the 2008 Six Nations, and made his final Test appearance against Canada later that same year.

The recognition that accompanied his rugby career afforded Thomas a lifestyle where he could obtain "anything he wanted", leading him to spend his weekends indulging in class A drugs and heavy bouts of drinking.

Following a heart attack in 2012, Thomas retired and has now been sober for more than seven years after completing a successful rehabilitation programme. He passionately encourages anyone who is struggling to seek help, even those who are not entirely convinced they require it.