Susannah Constantine 'lucky to be alive' after emergency hospitalisation

Susannah Constantine was told she was "lucky to be alive" after a health scare last year.

The style advisor, 61, revealed she had been hospitalised in June 2023 when she posted a video from her hospital bed and revealed that her "withered arm" turned out to be a symptom of "something a bit more serious".

In a new interview with OK! magazine, the What Not to Wear presenter revealed she had been suffering from pins and needles in her arm, tinnitus, and a swollen left eye before her emergency hospital dash.

Recalling that the medics told her she was "really lucky to be alive", Susannah added, "They said, 'It's Hobson's Choice, if you don't have the operation, you've got a one in three chance of having a brain haemorrhage, being paralysed or having a stroke. If you do have surgery, you've got a one in 10 chance of these same things happening during the operation.'"

The former Strictly Come Dancing contestant explained that she had a venous fistula, or an abnormal connection between an artery and a vein.

"I had a health scare and a pretty major operation," she continued. "It was a very rare thing where I had a leak - the arteries were bleeding into the capillaries and trapping the spinal cord, and affecting my brain."

In her original post last year, the TV personality gave a thumbs-up as she sat in a hospital bed connected to a drip. In the caption, she thanked staff for their care, although she did not divulge the nature of her health scare.

"Withered arm turned out to be (a) symptom of something a bit more serious," she wrote. "All sorted now thanks to our ailing but still magnificent NHS where we are lucky enough to have some of the most gifted doctors (and in this case neurosurgeons) in the world... Forever grateful."