Washington Wizards center Etan Thomas will reportedly go through an open-heart surgery meant to repair an aortic valve leak. The operation is scheduled for today in an undisclosed Minnesota hospital, the team said in a statement yesterday.

Although some sources have said that Thomas’ condition could threaten his NBA career, Dr. Ammar Bafi, a cardiac surgeon at Washington Hospital Center, believes the 29-year-old could make a full recovery and resume playing at his full potential.

The player’s condition was discovered at a routine team physical scheduled at the start of Wizards’ training camp in Richmond on Sunday.

"This is going to set him back some, but it is not necessarily career threatening," Dr. Bafi said in a phone interview. "Once he goes through the operation and recovers from the operation, in a few months or a year later he should be able to get back to doing what he was doing a year before."

Dr. Ammar Bafi said that finding Thomas’ valve leak is very important. Untreated, the leak would have led to the weakening of the heart and its eventual failure.

"You can die from this, but it takes years to develop," Dr. Bafi said. "Hopefully they are intervening early enough”.

Dr. Bafi said it can’t be estimated exactly how much Thomas’ recovery will take.

This unfortunate occurrence follows another similar case. Power forward Ronny Turiaf joined the Los Angeles Lakers less than six months after having open-heart surgery for an enlarged aortic root in 2005.

Etan Thomas is the Washington Wizards’ longest-tenured player as he played all his six years in the NBA with this team.